D&D 5E Basic Build Series: Fighter
- Race: Human (Variant)
- Class: Fighter
- Ability Scores
- Background (Custom)
- Equipment
- Level 2 Fighter
- Level 3 Fighter
- Level 4 Fighter
- Level 5 Fighter
- Level 6 Fighter
- Level 7 Fighter
- Level 8 Fighter
- Level 9 Fighter
- Level 10 Fighter
- Level 11 Fighter
- Level 12 Fighter
- Level 13 Fighter
- Level 14 Fighter
- Level 15 Fighter
- Level 16 Fighter
- Level 17 Fighter
- Level 18 Fighter
- Level 19 Fighter
- Level 20 Fighter
- Bonus Content: Damage per Round by Level
Author: Moonsilver | Stefan
Of the four classes without spells (subclasses aside) the Fighter is the most versatile. The class has all the tools necessary to be built as a high-output, ranged damage build, and for most martial archetypes this is the most superior option. This build, part of our Basic Build Series, uses the Battle Master martial archetype and the Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter feats to take out priority targets early on in a fight. It is especially adept at delivering high consistent damage at range without expending resources.
Race: Human (Variant)
Ability Score Increases – +1 Dex, +1 Con.
Feat – Crossbow Expert. This is the greatest damage increase option we have at level 1, outclassing Sharpshooter for now and synergizing with it when we pick it up at level 4.
Skill – Insight. A useful social skill.
Languages – Common and Dwarvish. The language choice doesn’t really matter, as it is campaign dependent and should be discussed with the DM. It can be useful to speak different languages from the rest of the party, or to have one obscure non-Common language that the entire party shares, so you can converse without the NPCs knowing what you’re talking about.
Class: Fighter
Skills – Acrobatics, Perception. Acrobatics allows us to resist and escape grapples. Perception is the most used skill in the game and important on every character.
Fighting Style – Archery. This is roughly a 20% damage increase for the build at all times and is a big reason why the Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter combination dominates martial options. No other Fighting Style offers nearly as much power.
Second Wind – Use this whenever you begin a short rest while injured. You can also short rest multiple times in a row to heal more, if time permits.
Ability Scores
8 Str, 15+1 Dex, 15+1 Con, 8 Int, 15 Wis, 8 Cha
The 15 Wisdom is here to synergize with Resilient (Wis), which we will be taking at level 12. If your campaign ends before then, allocate 14 Wisdom and put the remaining points into an Ability Score of your choice. 10 Strength would let you jump two full squares on a grid. 10 Intelligence or Charisma could come in handy for resisting rare but powerful monster abilities.
Background (Custom)
Skills – Athletics, Stealth. Stealth is frequently used by many optimized parties to achieve surprise in a combat encounter. Feel free to swap Athletics for anything else you like, it’s not critical, chosen here because it fits with what your party might expect a Fighter to be good at.
Tools – Mason’s tools, thieves’ tools. These have been chosen for their respective bonuses to Perception as described in the optional Xanathar’s Guide to Everything rules, which we further describe here.
Feature – Ship’s Passage. This is situational, but being able to secure free passage on a ship can be a boon in some campaigns.
Creator’s Note – Making a custom background is RAW, the PHB on page 125 states, “The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions…To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds.” Using this, we are making a custom background and using the Sailor feature.
Equipment
Fighter Starting Equipment
- Chain mail
- A hand crossbow, a longbow
- A light crossbow and 20 bolts
- Dungeoneer’s pack
Sailor Background Starting Equipment
- Belaying pin (club)
- 50 feet of silk rope
- Random Trinket
- A set of common clothes
- 10 Gold
Purchasing Goals
- Scale mail, then half-plate armor, then studded leather when we have 20 Dexterity. If you can’t purchase scale mail right away (by selling your chain mail), you’ll just have -10ft speed until you can.
- Crossbow bolts. A lot!
- Bullseye lantern and oil.
- Thieves’ tools.
- Healer’s kit, potions of healing.
Level 1 Strategy
Use your hand crossbow as your primary weapon. Either take out priority targets by expending your resources, or focus fire with the rest of your party. Move so the enemy doesn’t have cover from you while you end your turn in cover from them. Use your longbow to set up engagements at extreme range where the enemy never even has a chance to touch you. Keep metal weapons and armor of monsters that you find and cart them back to town (to repair them at level 3 with smith’s tools and subsequently sell them.)
Level 2 Fighter
Action Surge – You almost always want to use this round 1 of combat; especially try to take out enemy spellcasters.
Level 3 Fighter
Martial Archetype – Battle Master.
Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Trip Attack. To begin with, we have 4 superiority dice (d8’s), which we regain on short rests.
Menacing Attack – Use this against enemies that do not have ranged options. Frightened enemies cannot willingly move closer. If they don’t have ranged options, they will do nothing useful at all on their turn (assuming your party members have the common sense to not walk up to them; try to explicitly explain to them why that might not be in their best interest.)
Precision Attack – This is the nova option to one-shot priority targets round one of combat; it’s not efficient to use against targets that don’t matter.
Trip Attack – Knock dragons out of the sky. Also note that this is the most damage efficient option in your arsenal; if you hit someone with the first attack on your turn, you can trip them, and if that is successful, you can walk up to 5 feet range and unload, possibly with Action Surge, and thanks to Crossbow Expert all of that will be at advantage. This also generates advantage for melee attacking allies.
Student of War (Battle Master feature) – Smith’s tools. Repair metal weapons and armor, sell them for half value, it usually pays more than the adventure itself.
Level 4 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Sharpshooter. We now no longer need to maneuver as much to avoid long range disadvantage and cover, allowing us to get more cover ourselves and taking out priority targets at absurd angles. Precision Attack will hardly ever be spent on attacks that don’t use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 component. Setting the Trip Attack advantage combo becomes more impactful here.
Level 4 Strategy
When to -5/+10? With Sharpshooter in play, every attack brings the calculation on whether or not to use its -5/+10 component. Do not -5/+10 against things that would die to a normal hit. In other scenarios the answer depends on the enemy AC.
Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 19 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 20 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 14 or lower.
If you need to deal damage now, and are willing to spend Superiority Dice for Precision Attack, the AC threshold increases by 4.
If you can add 1d4 to your attack roll (e.g. from bless, or Emboldening Bond), the AC threshold increases by 2.
If you can add 2d4 to your attack roll (e.g. when under the effect of bless and Emboldening Bond), the AC threshold increases by 5.
If you have a magic weapon that increases your to-hit and damage by X, then it increases by roughly X (usually +1 for a +1 weapon, and +2 for +2 and +3 weapons), but not if you have disadvantage. The same is true if your Dexterity modifier increases.
Level 5 Fighter
Extra Attack – This makes your combos of Action Surge, Trip Attack, and Precision Attack hit a lot harder. Don’t forget that Menacing Attack on enemies without ranged attacks still makes for incredibly efficient kills.
Level 5 Strategy
Our proficiency bonus increases. Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 20 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 21 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 15 or lower.
Level 6 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement – +2 Dex raises our Dexterity to 18.
Level 6 Strategy
Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 21 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 22 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 15 or lower.
Level 7 Fighter
Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Disarming Strike, Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Rally, Trip Attack. More options, neat. We now have 5 superiority dice (d8’s).
Disarming Strike – It’s rare to come up, but sometimes you’ll want to snipe a magic item or focus away from an enemy; it being rare doesn’t matter though because the Trip, Precision, Menacing trinity will just be applicable all the time. This concept will be true of all other maneuver choices from here on out, too.
Rally – Rally at the start of the day and take a short rest before adventuring. Breakfast! If your party already has a superior source of temporary hit points, take a maneuver planned for further into the build early (level 10).
Know Your Enemy (Battle Master feature) – Use this as much as possible because it’s free, but don’t expect it to do much of anything. Constitution score, Armor Class, and Current hit points tend to be the best questions to ask.
Level 8 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement – +2 Dex raises our Dexterity score to 20. Now is when we finally switch to studded leather armor, excepting for any superior magic armor we’ve found.
Level 8 Strategy
Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 21 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 22 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 15 or lower.
Level 9 Fighter
Indomitable (one use) – Use this on saving throws you fail at moments where your damage is truly needed, don’t use it on a random command spell in round 6 of combat.
Level 9 Strategy
Our proficiency bonus increases. Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 22 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 23 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 16 or lower.
Level 10 Fighter
Improved Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Ambush, Disarming Strike, Maneuvering Attack, Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Rally, Trip Attack. We now have 5 superiority dice (d10’s).
Ambush – This maneuver from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything can be used to win initiative against the opposition in important fights where taking out a priority target before they even take a turn is crucial. If you can’t take options from Tasha’s book, consider the maneuvers taken at level 15.
Maneuvering Attack – Use this to reposition allies if necessary.
Level 11 Fighter
Extra Attack (2) – Damage is good.
Level 12 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Resilient (Wis). Resilient (Wisdom) affords us protection against the most debilitating and common conditions in the game, such as charm and frightened, and makes us significantly better suited to dealing with enemy spellcasters without getting shut down by spells like hold person. These effects become more common in later levels, so now is the time to grab this feat.
Level 13 Fighter
Indomitable (two uses) – Indomitable is helped a lot by Resilient (Wis); the main weakness of Indomitable is that it doesn’t help very much for very difficult saving throws, but Resilient can turn very difficult saving throws into reasonably makeable saving throws.
Level 13 Strategy
Our proficiency bonus increases. Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 23 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 24 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 17 or lower.
Level 14 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Lucky. This further protects us against nasty effects with saving throws; it can also be used to turn crucial misses into hits in situations where we really need to eliminate a target in one round.
Level 15 Fighter
Relentless – Getting back a superiority die if you have none at the start of combat is a good feature, especially for combats that get thrown at us when the party is trying to rest. This does not mean that we should waste our superiority dice in every first combat after a rest just to get one back at the start of combat two, however. What it does mean though, is that we never want to end combat on exactly one superiority die; do your best to spend it somehow. If you have one left after combat, Rally is often a good option to burn it.
Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Ambush, Bait and Switch, Disarming Strike, Maneuvering Attack, Menacing Attack, Precision Attack, Rally, Tactical Assessment, Trip Attack. We now have 6 superiority dice (d10’s).
Bait and Switch – Aside from the obvious use of repositioning an ally, you can also switch with an ally twice to give both of you a bonus to AC for a round, which allows front-liners to hold the line for a crucial round while not changing your ally’s favorable position. Keep in mind you get to roll for the AC before you decide who gets it, so in this scenario you want to give a below average first roll to yourself, and an above average first roll to your ally. Another thing you can do is swap with a back-liner (or even a familiar, pack mule, or other follower creature) to protect yourself for a round against ranged attacks (or melee enemies that have managed to rush up to you.) This maneuver is from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.
Tactical Assessment – Generally useful ability to have, just make sure to not waste it on checks where you could automatically succeed by taking more time. This maneuver is from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.
Level 15 Strategy
If you need some alternative maneuvers, from not having access to Tasha’s Cauldron or whatever other reason, here are some other interesting picks not otherwise taken in this build:
Parry. This is really not a great maneuver, but it might be the least bad out of all options left. Use this to keep yourself alive in a tight spot.
Pushing Attack. This can sometimes be used to trigger allied spells, keep an eye out for spells with wording like “when the creature enters the area for the first time on a turn.” If you push an enemy into these effects using Pushing Attack, they will immediately suffer the effect of the spell (and often also again at the start of their turn without getting a chance to leave the area before suffering the effect twice).
Distracting Strike. Use this to set up important allied attack rolls, like a contagion spell or an arrow of slaying.
Goading Strike. This is a downgrade to Menacing Attack most of the time, but if your enemy is immune to the frightened condition and you really want to give them disadvantage on their attacks, this is your maneuver. Since we are ranged, it doesn’t matter that they can attack us just fine, simply walk to a safe spot before ending your turn.
Level 16 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Alert. These are very straightforward bonuses, not getting surprised and going earlier makes us better at killing the target that needs killing before they cast meteor swarm on the party
Level 17 Fighter
Action Surge (two uses) – We might be able to start every combat with an Action Surge now.
Indomitable (three uses) – Don’t be afraid to use them.
Level 17 Strategy
Our proficiency bonus increases. Use Sharpshooter’s -5/+10 when:
- You have a “straight roll” and you believe the enemy AC is 24 or lower.
- You have advantage and you believe the enemy AC is 25 or lower.
- You have disadvantage and you believe the enemy AC is 18 or lower.
Level 18 Fighter
Improved Combat Superiority (Battle Master feature) – Superiority dice turn into d12s. This means when we plan to spend Precision Attack to deal damage now, it increases the AC threshold by 6 (up from 5.)
Level 19 Fighter
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Tough. This is the latest point to take the feat for the maximum bonus of hit points. At this stage we’ve run out of feats that make us actively do things, so we settle for not dying as often. If some other feat is calling to you, take it and don’t let your dreams be dreams.
Level 20 Fighter
Extra Attack (3) – Damage is good. Solid capstone.
Bonus Content: Damage per Round by Level
Author: The Pi Guy
Here we’ve included a DPR calculation for the above build as a point of comparison for any build focused entirely on damage.
Since the release of Tasha’s (not counting the Unearthed Arcana it was based on), a few maneuver options have been introduced. The one I figure you guys would most be interested in is Ambush:
Given the value of surprise rounds I figure this replaces one of the choices at level 3 (probably menacing), and then the trinity can be rounded back out at level 7.
This build took Ambush at level 10
Ah, hilarious, I assumed y’all would have jumped on it way before then and stopped reading at 7. It actually an interesting choice considering how much initiative is prioritized elsewhere on this blog. I’d love to see the numbers on a comparison between it and the level 3 choices (particularly Menacing and Precision, I think Trip’s supremacy over it is probably pretty intuitively self-evident).
For levels 5-9, if we think about Ambush as being worth about 20% of a turn (+4.5 to initiative is somewhere around a 20% chance that you go before any given monster when you wouldn’t have otherwise), then it’s worth about 0.6 of an additional attack (20% of 3 attacks), or usually about 0.3 of a hit on a CBE+SS+Archery build (which we figure for around 50% accuracy after the -5).
Precision’s value per die varies depending on how conservatively we use them, but if we use it when we are within 4 of a hit, which is typically a good compromise between maximizing conversions and being able to get damage early, then it converts about 0.81 of misses that we use it on (1/4 of those are within 1, 1/4 within 2, so 7/8 to hit, so it’s worth about 0.81 of a hit. So, more than twice as valuable as Ambush. Though that gap is narrowed somewhat if we consider that Ambush affects round 1 where that damage is most valuable, whereas Precision may not.
It’s harder to convert Menacing into damage since it’s mostly defensive and has variable value depending on the situation, but considering it may well prevent an entire monster turn from having an impact for being unable to move closer, I’m confident in saying that it’s worth more than the ~5-6 damage or so Ambush is buying. Heck, even the 1d8 on a hit is worth close to that before you even think about the frightened effect.
Thanks for the followup, that’s a good basis to work with. It seems like it could be fairly competitive with menacing solely from the perspective that making their melee-only monster irrelevant is going to be a lesson the DM probably only has to learn once, but it still has control uses even for monsters who it doesn’t rob the action out of. Precision is probably a bit more even, figure if you’re only using it when you miss by four then that’s a 20% chance of using it any given attack at base, although given the 4/rest limit you’re probably further limiting it to when an enemy is near-death. I don’t know average HP for encounters around CR 5, I’m guessing like 40-80? So “near-death” to this user would be 10-25% of the time, but you also might be willing to weight it higher in the first few rounds and be willing to just get someone close to being finished off. Figure that that all adds up to having an opportunity to use it something less than once a combat? Numerically it’s probably still at an advantage, but it’s a tough call I think.
Anyway, thanks for the detailed response, it was helpful to me and I hope it’s also helpful for anyone else who sees this post.
(another aspect of the calculation is that when you’re using precision, you know it’s because it’ll be clutch, which is less certain with ambush even though “going first” is abstractly very valuable)
I would add commander strike as an good option if you have a rogue in your party. Giving one of your attacks to get one extra sneak attack from your rouge in a round is worthy.
Commander’s Strike would cost this build 2 attacks (one from the attack action and the bonus action CBE attack) along with a superiority die; possibly still worth it depending on your rogue buddy but still a pretty steep price nonetheless.
Trip attack only works on things Large or smaller… so unless the dragon you’re talking about it a Wyrmling to Young age… Trip attack isn’t going to make them fall out of the sky.
Kind of confused by the calculations on when to -5/+10. At level 4, following the guide, I would have a +2 to hit when I did so, but it says to do it when I think the target’s AC is 19 or lower. Is the guide assuming Precision Attack is added in as well, because having a 20% chance to hit seems like a bad idea overall.
The guide is NOT assuming you’re using Precision Attack:
20% chance for d6+3+10 damage means you have an expected value (EV) of 3.475 damage per attack
If you were to not use -5+10 and instead have 45% chance for d6+3, you’d have an EV of 3.1 damage per attack
There are EXTREMELY rare cases where the volatility of the lower hit chance matters, but unless your target has 4~5 or less HP, you should still use -5+10, even if your hit chance doesn’t feel good – it’s simply correct to do so in the overwhelming majority of circumstances.
I’ve been catching up with your builds, very interesting stuff.
Most of the time builds here acknowledge the supremacy of casting, but in this case you went with BM over EK.
Is it for the sake of martial purity?
Or because CS dice synergize better with the first round single-target damage that is the build’s greatest plausible contribution?
In our Basic Builds Introduction post (which I don’t blame you for not reading!), we listed our reasons for why each subclass was chosen. Our top reason was Accessibility—we wanted each Basic Build to be relatively easy to port over to the general playstyle of any other subclass for that class. Now obviously this isn’t always possible, as some subclasses are very unique and some class just have subclass that play somewhat differently.
So the gist of it is that we picked Battle Master for the Fighter Basic Build because it had the most generally applicable strategy, which as you noted is reliable, high single-target damage. On the other hand, Eldritch Knight’s spell selection would have meant that it could play quite differently than your standard Fighter—there’s a good argument that using your Action Surge round 1 to cast a spell is your best move as an Eldritch Knight. And that wouldn’t have been as generally applicable to other subclasses. You may have already seen our Quick Builds series, but the Fighter entry for Quick Builds has a sample Eldritch Knight build.