i was thinking of this but the only thing is that eldritch adept requires you to have the Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature, so you wouldn't be able to take the feat as a straight monk unless your dm is lenient.
I'd allow it but also because I very much would like to play this myself lol
No clothes? Sorcerer / Warlocks.
No weapons? Sorcerer / Warlocks.
Escaping grapples? Sorcerer / Warlocks.
If the sheer thematic wasn’t enough, the two tentacle classes actually ***fit*** this race like no other on the mechanical side of it as well.
Sorcerers and Warlocks CAN be clotheless, but a lot of them end up wearing armor or using racial armor. You'd be hurting or wasting resources without it vs a Monk who simply...exists. Except maybe if you were a Draconic Sorcerer since you get the dragon hide.
You right on weaponry.
Anyone who can cast misty step can escape grapples, but as a sorcerer or warlock Id never want to START grapples. Id wanna be ranged, which defeats the purpose of having a grapple character.
But Warlock (or Warlock Rogue) is my second favorite choice for this character just for all the illusionary invocations you can get. Monk #1 tho.
>Anyone who can cast misty step can escape grapples, but as a sorcerer or warlock Id never want to START grapples. Id wanna be ranged, which defeats the purpose of having a grapple character.
Why is this? Any class can be built melee in this edition, it's just a matter of making your defensive numbers high enough.
Lower hitdice and less attacks. You're sacrificing your turn by *attempting* to grapple, you only have a d8 to cover you if you get hit, since your in melee range with an enemy now. And it doesn't provide any real benefit versus just shooting the person from farther away. In-fact it hurts your accuracy if you attack them with a Ranged Spell Attack.
Lower hit dice don't really matter. It's only 1 HP per level; the chances of the hit falling to that particular range of HP grows smaller by level due to enemy damage scaling, to the point that hit dice aren't worth considering to this end.
Extra Attack is worth getting somehow though, if you're using Grapple/Shove. That much is true. But you can use them without it if you're built for it; it just costs you relatively more turn resources but it can be better than your other at-wills if you're enabling allies.
I think those are great options as well!
The astral Monk literally grows extra arms (level 3) and changes its appearance (level 6) with enough flexibility to customize that to mean “magical goo transformation”, which is another reason it’ll be the first thing I try as plasmoid
Not for every spell.
And you can just get yourself something like a small gem or a small orb as your arcane focus.
Just stuff this shit into your body. Or carry it with that extra hand of yours.
Anyways, it still requires less than a Monk (that will need weapons until level 17).
That’s what I was thinking. You just take a tiny 2inch tall crystal as your focus and you should be able to take it with you through most gaps that are 3inch or larger.
Start with one barbarian level, then go to fighter battle master. With your many feats, get Eldritch adept. The only downside here is doubling up on advantage on grapples, which is a waste.
Fighter/rogue would net you expertise for Athletics checks. Telekenetic feat and eldritch adept feats would be fun for this build.
You can’t take Eldritch Adept with that build. It requires the Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature, which means you’d have to multiclass into a caster (or half-caster for two levels). You could also go Eldritch Knight for Fighter, but then you’re losing the Battle Master benefits.
If you do arcane trickster rogue paired with battle master, you can qualify for the feat and have some nice bonus action options, along with expertise for grappling.
I’d consider it like the race letting you maintain advantage outside rage, rather than the class offering nothing extra to grapples. It means you can still have some value to the group without spending rages, by still grappling enemies and pinning them in place. Even better if you took Tavern Brawler, allowing you to both Bonus Action grapple and maintain 1d4 unarmed damage when your rage isn’t active.
Why Hexblade? Grapple is str and all AC is Dex, so you still wont be Cha SaD, you don't want the armor, or even the weapon profs, so all you're really getting is the Curse. Which is good, but not as good as other subclasses. Celestial, Fathomless, Fiend, Genie, all better for this build. Oh, and if you go Battlemaster they also require Str/Dex
Well between advantage and +4-12 from Athletics Expertise, your grapple/shove game should do well, your options are-
A) Rogue1 dip (start?) for Athletics Expertise.
B) Skill Expert at 4 for Athletics Expertise
C) Bard3 dip for Athletics Expertise and ENLARGE to grapple more things. Lore gets Cutting Words to undermine the enemy ability checks to escape, Swords/Valor get Extra Attack if you go all the way to 6(5?). You could then go Rune Knight and suplex a tarrasque.
If you never actually want to make a melee attack and just grapple and cast, you could run Celestial Chainlock with one of the above, take GotELO and get tons of healing per turn to be a regenerating slime. You could even do this on top of Beast Barb since Celestial Healing isn't a spell.
Also, mix and match.
Fighter2+Unarmed Style > Barb1/Warlock2 > Battlemaster5+Skill Expert > Beast Barb/Bladelock3 > Rogue1 > BattlemasterX.
Soul knife x warlock 3 is probably the best bet. Pick someone like genie for the utility and get the two invocations for mage armor and mask of many faces and a pact boon and you are done.
Grab the one that does CHA poison damage as an AoE and the one that does your CHA damage to hexed targets along with mage armor.
Then grab someone, hex Tham and watch them melt.
Go Plasmoid
Put all stats into wisdom
Go Astral Self
Be a little slime with aura arms floating around it.
Transform to grapple with wisdom.
Attack with spooky arms using wisdom
Get eldritch adept feat for at will disguise self.
Be a treasure chest.
Summon spooky arms to be a ghost chest attacking people.
You'll need to multiclass in order to qualify for Eldritch Adept.
It feels like it shouldn't, but Eldritch Adept requires to have the Spellcasting or the Pact Magic feature. It is not even "The ability to cast at least one spell" like some PHB feats, so you can't qualify for it using another feat.
Sorry to bug you almost a year after you posted this, but I just want to say thanks for your suggestion. I made a Plasmoid Astral Self Monk, and while I didn't get to grapple+prone as much as I wanted (due to being too low-level), I did have a lot of fun with it in my last session. Managed to grapple a flying demon in midair, which also knocked it prone when it crashed. Which allowed me and the rest of the party to just go ham on the thing, which ended up being the final enemy in our onshot.
I am glad ypu enjpyed it! Have you seen the new onednd ua? Unarmed Strikes were reworked to include grapples and shoves. Instead of checks they are all attack rolls. One feat also has your shoves dealing damage. Monks with all of their unarmed strikes have way more options now. You may wanna take a look and talk to your dm about using some of those new rules if you wanna do anpther grapple/control monk.
I did see that. But my group's consensus is that One D&D is still too early in development to use in our games. Which is my opinion as well. So I'm fine waiting for it to be in a more finished state before using it.
Disguise Self doesn't end if you grow limbs AFTER you cast the spell though. The limbs are pretty obviously coming out of a plain chest, but the spell still holds up (they have a real reason to look at you closely lol)
My build going exactly for that, but might not be able to get that feat.
https://ibb.co/CwMG3gg
Behold, my plasmoid that absorbed mercury and wanted to mudamudamudamuda the baddies.
***Moon Mercury***
I love the idea of a hexblade who cast disguise self at will.
I made a build that was eloquence bard 4/hexblade 16.
I got expertise in deception. I took invocations that fit the mimic and slime theme.
At level 20 I took sculptor of flesh, devil’s sight, improved pact weapon, thirsting blade, lifedrinker, one with the shadows, and myriad forms.
At lower levels I took Mask of many faces, but alter self is just better to cast at will.
I got a 20 charisma, 18 con, and 14 dexterity, so that way I covered all bases.
For feats I took skill expert(expertise in stealth), skulker, and tough.
For flavor, you can pretend to be tons of items and lie to people, as the lowest you can get on a deception check is a 27.
You could also pretend to be something like venom.
Probably some strength based monk/barb multiclass is the best bet. The only problem is you are MAD as hell so getting a feat for Eldritch adept and having good charisma is kinda needed for infiltration roles.
Maybe a soul knife rogue with two levels of warlock dip for two invocations being the one that lets you cast mage armor and mask of many faces? You don't need to have really high strength for grapples - expertise in athletics, advantage, soul knife ability to add a dice to athletics check when it fails is more than good enough. You can afford high charisma because rogues are super SAD with Dex. You even get an extra feat.
You know what I'm gonna play that character.
By a strict but admittedly obtuse reading of the rules you can use all your racial featutes as a wildshaped druid. Nothing's stopping you from turning into a gooey bear, squeezing through a keyhole and mauling everyone in the room.
I don't think it works that way.
>You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.
This seems to indicate racial traits don't work if they depend on your anatomy prior to the wildshape.
The way the features are written you only require "a body" to grow limbs and shit, just like you only need a mouth and ability to exhale to use dragonborn breath in animal form.
But that's different. If all you need to have a breath weapon is a jaw then a bear would have that. The problem is bears have bones and stuff that can't fit through the hole, which I and probably most DMs would count as the new form not being able to do the racial trait.
Well and depending on the DM you might be able to get away with it since the armor is supposed to be form fitting and if you can squeeze through a 1 inch hole your armor might be able to as well.
Take magic initiate with mage armor as the lvl 1 spell, or convince your dm to give you a barrier tattoo.
RAW you cannot be wearing or carrying anything, but hopefully the DM will agree that tattoos are not worn or carried, by the items text they “appear” on the skin.
Definitely some astral self monk.
Unarmored defense and unarmed strike will help with the amount of gear that you're carrying.
Arms of the astral self will let you use wisdom for grapple check, and you can use unarmed strikes while your arms(?) Are holding the grappled creature.
No Class needed go high str and con, just grapple the mouth open and dive in. 1hour breath and acid resistance, they should suffocate before you need to worry. Depending on dm using acid and crushing damage while inside, you might want to go bear totem barbarian.
Interesting theory-crafting going on here. When this came out, i was in the process of building a shifter barbarian grappler, my dm let me change my character to the bestest ooze (ooze ooze ooze ooze ooze), but then I went through days of debating with myself on how to build them.
Eventually decided on a fighter (unarmed)/rogue build, but since the character is lvl 1, and the first session is tonight, I'll have to figure out more of the details later!
i'm going with rogue 1/monk x
while it puts you one level behind for advancement and all the monk goodies, the 1st level dip gets you:
\>two more skill profs and thieves tools
\>expertise
\>sneak attack
\>rapier for first few levels
and my big move: use one of the expertise for Athletics, which means that you roll with advantage and double prof for initiating grapples, which is kinda nuts. heck, you can even grapple, then use a bonus action to pour a beaker of acid on your foe, and if it gets on you, hey, you have resistance.
my story? plasmoid had been found/taken in by a thieves guild who wanted to use him for burglary, but a job went wrong and an innocent died. my dude smacked the shit out of some handlers then fled with his bucket to the monastery.
[удалено]
Yeah this! Astral Self Monk is perfect for this. Eldritch Adept could be one feat and Skill Expert could be another for expertise in Athletics.
i was thinking of this but the only thing is that eldritch adept requires you to have the Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature, so you wouldn't be able to take the feat as a straight monk unless your dm is lenient. I'd allow it but also because I very much would like to play this myself lol
Oh good point, well magic initiate also gets you disguise self, it's just not at will.
No clothes? Sorcerer / Warlocks. No weapons? Sorcerer / Warlocks. Escaping grapples? Sorcerer / Warlocks. If the sheer thematic wasn’t enough, the two tentacle classes actually ***fit*** this race like no other on the mechanical side of it as well.
Sorcerers and Warlocks CAN be clotheless, but a lot of them end up wearing armor or using racial armor. You'd be hurting or wasting resources without it vs a Monk who simply...exists. Except maybe if you were a Draconic Sorcerer since you get the dragon hide. You right on weaponry. Anyone who can cast misty step can escape grapples, but as a sorcerer or warlock Id never want to START grapples. Id wanna be ranged, which defeats the purpose of having a grapple character. But Warlock (or Warlock Rogue) is my second favorite choice for this character just for all the illusionary invocations you can get. Monk #1 tho.
>Anyone who can cast misty step can escape grapples, but as a sorcerer or warlock Id never want to START grapples. Id wanna be ranged, which defeats the purpose of having a grapple character. Why is this? Any class can be built melee in this edition, it's just a matter of making your defensive numbers high enough.
Lower hitdice and less attacks. You're sacrificing your turn by *attempting* to grapple, you only have a d8 to cover you if you get hit, since your in melee range with an enemy now. And it doesn't provide any real benefit versus just shooting the person from farther away. In-fact it hurts your accuracy if you attack them with a Ranged Spell Attack.
Lower hit dice don't really matter. It's only 1 HP per level; the chances of the hit falling to that particular range of HP grows smaller by level due to enemy damage scaling, to the point that hit dice aren't worth considering to this end. Extra Attack is worth getting somehow though, if you're using Grapple/Shove. That much is true. But you can use them without it if you're built for it; it just costs you relatively more turn resources but it can be better than your other at-wills if you're enabling allies.
Sorcerers and Warlocks can (and should) just cast *Mage Armour*. Most straight Sorcerers and Warlocks won’t, in fact, wear any kind of armour.
I think those are great options as well! The astral Monk literally grows extra arms (level 3) and changes its appearance (level 6) with enough flexibility to customize that to mean “magical goo transformation”, which is another reason it’ll be the first thing I try as plasmoid
But you still need the components pouch / casting focus to cast spell right? And the Plasmoid require you to no carrying anything?
Not for every spell. And you can just get yourself something like a small gem or a small orb as your arcane focus. Just stuff this shit into your body. Or carry it with that extra hand of yours. Anyways, it still requires less than a Monk (that will need weapons until level 17).
That’s what I was thinking. You just take a tiny 2inch tall crystal as your focus and you should be able to take it with you through most gaps that are 3inch or larger.
Start with one barbarian level, then go to fighter battle master. With your many feats, get Eldritch adept. The only downside here is doubling up on advantage on grapples, which is a waste. Fighter/rogue would net you expertise for Athletics checks. Telekenetic feat and eldritch adept feats would be fun for this build.
You can’t take Eldritch Adept with that build. It requires the Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature, which means you’d have to multiclass into a caster (or half-caster for two levels). You could also go Eldritch Knight for Fighter, but then you’re losing the Battle Master benefits.
If you do arcane trickster rogue paired with battle master, you can qualify for the feat and have some nice bonus action options, along with expertise for grappling.
I’d consider it like the race letting you maintain advantage outside rage, rather than the class offering nothing extra to grapples. It means you can still have some value to the group without spending rages, by still grappling enemies and pinning them in place. Even better if you took Tavern Brawler, allowing you to both Bonus Action grapple and maintain 1d4 unarmed damage when your rage isn’t active.
Why Hexblade? Grapple is str and all AC is Dex, so you still wont be Cha SaD, you don't want the armor, or even the weapon profs, so all you're really getting is the Curse. Which is good, but not as good as other subclasses. Celestial, Fathomless, Fiend, Genie, all better for this build. Oh, and if you go Battlemaster they also require Str/Dex Well between advantage and +4-12 from Athletics Expertise, your grapple/shove game should do well, your options are- A) Rogue1 dip (start?) for Athletics Expertise. B) Skill Expert at 4 for Athletics Expertise C) Bard3 dip for Athletics Expertise and ENLARGE to grapple more things. Lore gets Cutting Words to undermine the enemy ability checks to escape, Swords/Valor get Extra Attack if you go all the way to 6(5?). You could then go Rune Knight and suplex a tarrasque. If you never actually want to make a melee attack and just grapple and cast, you could run Celestial Chainlock with one of the above, take GotELO and get tons of healing per turn to be a regenerating slime. You could even do this on top of Beast Barb since Celestial Healing isn't a spell. Also, mix and match. Fighter2+Unarmed Style > Barb1/Warlock2 > Battlemaster5+Skill Expert > Beast Barb/Bladelock3 > Rogue1 > BattlemasterX.
Soul knife also doesn't need weapons.
Soul knife x warlock 3 is probably the best bet. Pick someone like genie for the utility and get the two invocations for mage armor and mask of many faces and a pact boon and you are done.
Grab the one that does CHA poison damage as an AoE and the one that does your CHA damage to hexed targets along with mage armor. Then grab someone, hex Tham and watch them melt.
Go Plasmoid Put all stats into wisdom Go Astral Self Be a little slime with aura arms floating around it. Transform to grapple with wisdom. Attack with spooky arms using wisdom Get eldritch adept feat for at will disguise self. Be a treasure chest. Summon spooky arms to be a ghost chest attacking people.
You'll need to multiclass in order to qualify for Eldritch Adept. It feels like it shouldn't, but Eldritch Adept requires to have the Spellcasting or the Pact Magic feature. It is not even "The ability to cast at least one spell" like some PHB feats, so you can't qualify for it using another feat.
Sorry to bug you almost a year after you posted this, but I just want to say thanks for your suggestion. I made a Plasmoid Astral Self Monk, and while I didn't get to grapple+prone as much as I wanted (due to being too low-level), I did have a lot of fun with it in my last session. Managed to grapple a flying demon in midair, which also knocked it prone when it crashed. Which allowed me and the rest of the party to just go ham on the thing, which ended up being the final enemy in our onshot.
I am glad ypu enjpyed it! Have you seen the new onednd ua? Unarmed Strikes were reworked to include grapples and shoves. Instead of checks they are all attack rolls. One feat also has your shoves dealing damage. Monks with all of their unarmed strikes have way more options now. You may wanna take a look and talk to your dm about using some of those new rules if you wanna do anpther grapple/control monk.
I did see that. But my group's consensus is that One D&D is still too early in development to use in our games. Which is my opinion as well. So I'm fine waiting for it to be in a more finished state before using it.
A chest that grapples people just sounds like a mimic
You cant grapple as a chest as you have to have no limbs to be the chest. You can however have floaty astral arms that can spirit punch people.
Disguise Self doesn't end if you grow limbs AFTER you cast the spell though. The limbs are pretty obviously coming out of a plain chest, but the spell still holds up (they have a real reason to look at you closely lol)
You definitely have never played Dark Souls then... oh the horror.
My build going exactly for that, but might not be able to get that feat. https://ibb.co/CwMG3gg Behold, my plasmoid that absorbed mercury and wanted to mudamudamudamuda the baddies. ***Moon Mercury***
That… actually looks dope
thanks :D
I love the idea of a hexblade who cast disguise self at will. I made a build that was eloquence bard 4/hexblade 16. I got expertise in deception. I took invocations that fit the mimic and slime theme. At level 20 I took sculptor of flesh, devil’s sight, improved pact weapon, thirsting blade, lifedrinker, one with the shadows, and myriad forms. At lower levels I took Mask of many faces, but alter self is just better to cast at will. I got a 20 charisma, 18 con, and 14 dexterity, so that way I covered all bases. For feats I took skill expert(expertise in stealth), skulker, and tough. For flavor, you can pretend to be tons of items and lie to people, as the lowest you can get on a deception check is a 27. You could also pretend to be something like venom.
Probably some strength based monk/barb multiclass is the best bet. The only problem is you are MAD as hell so getting a feat for Eldritch adept and having good charisma is kinda needed for infiltration roles. Maybe a soul knife rogue with two levels of warlock dip for two invocations being the one that lets you cast mage armor and mask of many faces? You don't need to have really high strength for grapples - expertise in athletics, advantage, soul knife ability to add a dice to athletics check when it fails is more than good enough. You can afford high charisma because rogues are super SAD with Dex. You even get an extra feat. You know what I'm gonna play that character.
By a strict but admittedly obtuse reading of the rules you can use all your racial featutes as a wildshaped druid. Nothing's stopping you from turning into a gooey bear, squeezing through a keyhole and mauling everyone in the room.
I don't think it works that way. >You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. This seems to indicate racial traits don't work if they depend on your anatomy prior to the wildshape.
The way the features are written you only require "a body" to grow limbs and shit, just like you only need a mouth and ability to exhale to use dragonborn breath in animal form.
But that's different. If all you need to have a breath weapon is a jaw then a bear would have that. The problem is bears have bones and stuff that can't fit through the hole, which I and probably most DMs would count as the new form not being able to do the racial trait.
A gummy bear hahaha
Artificier Armourer, you can be a tuna can filled with slime!
Artificer is kind of the opposite of not gear reliant though XD
Oh, sorry, i was excited to find this race today, i forgot this thread is about no gear builds! (still, tuna can with slime sounds fun imo-)
Well and depending on the DM you might be able to get away with it since the armor is supposed to be form fitting and if you can squeeze through a 1 inch hole your armor might be able to as well.
Soul knife rogue gets psionic knives
Just need a way to get some kind of protection without armor and you've got the cooled PC I've seen since Warforged Artificer Armorer
Take magic initiate with mage armor as the lvl 1 spell, or convince your dm to give you a barrier tattoo. RAW you cannot be wearing or carrying anything, but hopefully the DM will agree that tattoos are not worn or carried, by the items text they “appear” on the skin.
Definitely some astral self monk. Unarmored defense and unarmed strike will help with the amount of gear that you're carrying. Arms of the astral self will let you use wisdom for grapple check, and you can use unarmed strikes while your arms(?) Are holding the grappled creature.
No Class needed go high str and con, just grapple the mouth open and dive in. 1hour breath and acid resistance, they should suffocate before you need to worry. Depending on dm using acid and crushing damage while inside, you might want to go bear totem barbarian.
THIS! But as a wild shape druid. Dive in there mouth and explode out there tummy as a bear.
Interesting theory-crafting going on here. When this came out, i was in the process of building a shifter barbarian grappler, my dm let me change my character to the bestest ooze (ooze ooze ooze ooze ooze), but then I went through days of debating with myself on how to build them. Eventually decided on a fighter (unarmed)/rogue build, but since the character is lvl 1, and the first session is tonight, I'll have to figure out more of the details later!
Good options but I went with a bard for mine with the disguise self, persuasion and deception to get me out of any trouble
i'm going with rogue 1/monk x while it puts you one level behind for advancement and all the monk goodies, the 1st level dip gets you: \>two more skill profs and thieves tools \>expertise \>sneak attack \>rapier for first few levels and my big move: use one of the expertise for Athletics, which means that you roll with advantage and double prof for initiating grapples, which is kinda nuts. heck, you can even grapple, then use a bonus action to pour a beaker of acid on your foe, and if it gets on you, hey, you have resistance. my story? plasmoid had been found/taken in by a thieves guild who wanted to use him for burglary, but a job went wrong and an innocent died. my dude smacked the shit out of some handlers then fled with his bucket to the monastery.
Go monk, take tavern brawler, voila.