Half-Orc

17 Barbarian Zelot / 3 Fighter Champion

Table of Content

1. Introduction
2. Concept
3. Race
4. Abilities
5. Build
6. Final thoughts

Introduction

THIS IS NOT A GUIDE.

This is a concept build that may or may not be optimized. While the tendency is usually to "make things work well", the building process is driven by the concept, so there could be better choices available to min-max a similar build.

Concept of the build

For this build I have two different spins, one was my idea the other one came out in a conversation with my friend S. My personal spin for the background was correlated to the Goblin Witch Doctor story. During the war, this Half-Orc was a study subject of that goblin because the fact that someone could be so hard to take down was fascinating.

"GLORAUSAN AVO GRUUUUUUUUMSH!". Giants are big stupid and slow, it is a pleasure to hear the crack of their shins or crash their ankles. The rage inside me, it keeps me alive, I need it. The battlefield moves in slow motion and I'm like a cracklight of the sky, hitting hard and fast. I don't feel them, I do not care.

The goblin keeps looking at me, I hate it. He did something to me more than once. I am sure that I was going to meet Gruumsh and battle him and then dine to his table but instead I opened my eyes looking at the gray smokey sky. I stood up, grabbed my weapon and again another giant down.

This morning someone told me that humans raided my village, it's impossible. I cannot leave here, I cannot abandon battle! Still if the lie is true, I need vengeance... I'll decide tonight after this battle.

My friend's spin on this build concept was instead about this warrior figure, a legend called the Undying Warrior. The TL;DR of the story is that in a primitive tribe there is this warrior that seems unable to die... well not really. The warrior can die, but can also be resurrected with ease. So the tribe keeps him dead until there is a hard task to overcame for which the warrior gets resurrected and then killed at the end of the task. The warrior is tired of this cycle since he is awaken on different eras where everything is changed. He doesn't have relatives alive anymore, he is alone and he has to serve the present chief of the village doesn't matter the reasons. He would like to just rest in peace for ever.

Priority for abilities and their distribution

I AM USING A 27 POINT BUY, if you are using a different method to allocate abilities, I'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand what to do.

Let's start with the fact that I love Constitution and I will generally try and get a very high score on that, even though it means to have a lower score in my second important ability. I am of the opinion that I don't want to be downed. Downed means zero usefulness, I'd rather be charmed and start beating on a party member than be downed and do nothing. Oh the laughs... I will try to get always the highest possible score in COS.

This would be my preferred ability points distribution for this build:

Half-Orc option

Ability	Score	Racial	Total	Modifier
Strength	15	+2	17	+3
Dexterity	14		14	+2
Constitution	15	+1	16	+3
Intelligence	8		8	-1
Wisdom	10		10	0
Charisma	8		8	-1

The idea for this distribution is to grab at Lv4 the Half-Orc feat Orchish Fury or GWM and squeeze in at some point the feat that wasn't taken while at the same time pump STR. Costitution is in this case whenever possible. Between damage reduction, highest HP dice and easy resurrection the priority of this skills is scaled down (even for me!).

Alternatives could be Goliath, Bugbear or the Mountain Dwarf.

• The Goliath offer some damage reduction with Stone Endurance
• The Bugbear has reach and a damage bonus on surprise attack
• The mighty and bearded Dwarf allows for a sweet +2 in STR and COS Pick your flavour but all of those will provide with less crit potential.

Build progression

Level 20 build progressions are useless, even in the case one wants to play a Lv20 adventure the progression is not that helpful. I will probably list the breakpoints, leaving open the build for any change. The Half-Orc build is obviously built as a crit fisher type of build so Champion is the obvious choice. Having said that my personal thoughts are that we need that 2nd attack as soon as possible so we don't fall behind in damage, since it should be our job to hurt the guys that need hurting. So Champion will need to wait until lvl 6 and then at 8 the build is finally online.

The build will progress along these lines:

Level	Class	Features
1	Barbarian	RAGE, Unarmoured Defense (even though I think wearing armor at this level might be better)
2	Barbarian	Reckless Attack
3	Zealot	Zelot sweetness
4	Zealot	ASI: feat Orchish Fury
5	Zealot	Second Attack
6	Fighter	Fighting style: GWF, Second Wind
7	Fighter	Action Surge
8	Champion	Champion sweetness
...

From Lv9 onwards I would level up as a Zealot.

IMPORTANT: What weapon should you use?

HERE you can find the actual explanation backed up by Math and confirmed by Automation. In short for this specific build you should use Greatsword for the first 11 levels and at Lv12 you should switch to Greataxe (assuming the 5barb/3fight/Xbarb distribution).

Final Thoughts

This is a very nice build. Whoever is going to play a combat based campaign, I think will enjoy the big numbers of this build. It is also in my opinion easy to pick up for a new D&D player. A downside of the build is that it can bee too much one dimensional. There are opportunities for a great character development, but the mechanics are fairly simple.