"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
One of my two current D&D characters is Jimmy Stoneford, a P.I. who thought maybe adventuring would pay the bills better than tracking down cheating husbands and two-bit con men.
He's a level 3 Vagabond. Vagabond is a custom class available on DMs Guild, and the creator happens to be my CampDragon DM and so allows usage of his custom classes.
At 3rd level a really cool combo came together. Wanted to outline it here because it was so much fun to actually get to use it in a game last session.
The fun thing is that in CampDragon there's a something called inheritance, where you can retire an older higher level character and your new character can get something from the retired one - even a feat!
I took the Crusher feat from my retired monk. This allows me to, when I deal bludgeoning damage, push them back 5'. Jimmy uses a mace. So that's step 1.
Step 2 is that Vagabonds have a nifty thing called Knacks. Knacks are like bits of knowledge that you pick up throughout your life (and can basically give you abilities that span the traditional D&D classes). At 3rd level I chose the Arcane Spell Knack
Arcane Spell Knack gives you access to a couple spells and a cantrip from either Sorcerer or Wizard spells. For my cantrip I chose Booming blade.
Finally Step 3, my Vagabond has a "vocation" of Guardian. It's basically a sub-class. A cool feature of Guardians is Protector.
Protector is fun because, as a bonus action, you can generate an area around you with a radius of your reach (5' for Jimmy) that is difficult terrain AND allows you to take a reaction to attack a creature who enters that area.
You can see where this is going, right?
1. Jimmy makes a bludgeoning attack with his mace + Booming Blade and hits.
2. Crusher pushes the enemy back 5' on a hit
3. Now the enemy has to choose whether they want to get up in my business of their own volition. If they move to attack me, they take Booming Blade damage + I get a reaction to attack them again (assuming I haven't used my reaction for the round yet). And on that reaction, since it's not part of my turn, I can push them back AGAIN.
Now this only really works against enemies that have a 5' reach. But when it works it's GREAT. If the first hit lands that triggers all this, and the move back to me they'll have to use 10' of movement (Protector). If my reaction attack hits, and I push them back again, that's another 10' of movement they'll have to burn.
I got to use this combo in my last session with Jimmy and it was super fun to tank and push a Wraith Lord around like a boss (even though I was one lucky CON save away from being irrevocably dead).
I highly recommend the Vagabond class. It's insanely flexible, allowing you to build a PC to suit your and the party's needs as a campaign evolves. The author also has a number of other custom classes that look like a ton of fun as well.
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