Get Off My Lawn! A Shillelagh Build for D&D 5e
A old man carries nothing but his staff as he travels the lonely streets, fully aware of the band of rogues that have been tailing him for the last four blocks. Silently, one jumps from the shadows, dagger in hand, and is met with the sharp crack of a staff, contrasted by the sound of his own skull cracking from the impact. He slumps to the ground, and the other rogues leap out to attack. Truly, these ruffians lack wisdom…
Shillelagh is a strange little cantrip, allowing us to make attacks with a quarterstaff using our Wisdom, bumping the damage slightly, and making it magical if it isn’t already. On its own, it’s a difficult cantrip to use effectively. It’s only available to Druids, who don’t get extra attack, so we’ll need to get it some other way and also grab extra attack by a reasonable level. Also, Shillelagh does not work with Great Weapon Master, meaning we need to focus on something other than damage as our main combat strategy. Let’s get into the build and answer some of these questions.
Race: Custom Origin
This build is very feat hungry, so grabbing one at level 1 is really important. If your DM gives feats at level 1 to everyone, you have a lot of freedom, so pick your favorites, but special mention to flying races or ones that can gain flight temporarily (Gem Dragonborn would be my selection). We are a melee combatant, so having flight gives us something to do when we encounter flying enemies.
Feat: Fey Touched
Honestly we are mostly taking this because it lets us start the game with an 18 in Wisdom. Misty Step is a great spell that is wonderful for melee combatants, as it helps us both get into and out of trouble. As for the other spell, I’m grabbing Silvery Barbs. We will be relying on enemies failing a save for our strategy to be fully effective, so forcing them to reroll that save could be crucial in certain circumstances.
Ability Scores (Point Buy)
9/14/13/8/18/13 (+3 to Wisdom from race and Fey Touched)
We need a 14 Dexterity to fill out medium armor, 13 Constitution will be rounded up by a feat later, 18 Wisdom because that’s our primary stat, and 13 Charisma for a multiclass later.
Level 1: Fighter 1
We take our first level in Fighter for a few reasons. Constitution save proficiency is a must, and we want two different fighting styles on this character. We’ll take Dueling now, as again, we should be trying to get as much damage as possible even if we won’t reach the highest heights. We’ll be making 3 attacks per turn eventually, so that +2 to damage is very helpful. For now, we’ll stay at range and just fire a longbow. If you’re going to be playing this character at first or second level for a long time, maybe just go straight to our next class and come back for Fighter levels later.
Levels 2-3: Fighter 1, Ranger 2
Level 1 of Ranger doesn’t give us much, but level 2 finally gives us access to Shillelagh through Druidic Warrior. Now we will pick up our Quarterstaff and a shield, and go into melee. I’d also recommend grabbing the Magic Stone cantrip, especially if you don’t have access to flight, as it gives us access to a ranged option that uses our Wisdom when we can’t hit anything in melee. As for spells, pick up Entangle and Goodberry. Entangle will be our control spell for now, and Goodberry gives us an amazing healing spell that we will be making even better later.
Level 4-6: Fighter 1, Ranger 5
Our Ranger subclass will be Swarmkeeper. How you flavor your swarm is up to you, but I’m picking bats. That will make more sense later. The big gain from this is the 15ft push if the enemy fails a Strength save once per turn. This is normally a bit unreliable, as Rangers struggle to have very high Wisdom scores, which is the stat our save is based on. Thanks to our focus on Shillelagh, we don’t have this issue, and enemies will fail this save much more consistently. Now we just need to consistently take advantage of this push. Ranger gives us Spike Growth, a spell that adds extra damage to the shove and makes enemies not want to move, and Swarmkeeper actually gives us Web, the best 2nd level control spell in the game. Restraining enemies and trapping them in difficult terrain means that it is incredibly hard for them to escape, completely neutering anything without a ranged attack and still imposing disadvantage on ranged attacks. We will use our 15ft shove to push our enemies into these spells, keeping them away from us and our allies. Other great spell pickups include Pass without Trace, Locate Object, and Silence if you find you face a lot of spellcasters. Through these levels we will also gain extra attack, one level later than most but it will hurt us less because at level 5…
Feat: Polearm Master
…we take this feat and gain a second attack anyway. Attacking multiple times is really useful, as it means we are less likely to miss, which is important for us because our whole strategy revolves around hitting our enemies. The extra damage is also very important, it synergizes with Dueling, and the reaction attack we get from it will also increase our expected damage.
Level 7: Fighter 1, Ranger 5, Warlock 1
You’ve probably been wondering why we have a 13 Charisma, and here’s your answer. Specifically we are taking the Undead patron, as we want Form of Dread. This feature automatically makes one target we hit per turn frightened of us. This is incredibly useful when paired with forced movement, as being frightened prevents our enemies from getting closer to us. This is a combo that completely shuts down melee enemies and pairs incredibly well with full caster allies who can lay down area of effect spells like Sickening Radiance. Talk to your party and inform them that you can assist them with spells like this and revel in the teamwork created thereby.
Level 8: Fighter 1, Ranger 5, Warlock 1, Cleric 1
Taking one level in Life Cleric gives us the ability to supercharge our Goodberries. Our 1st level Life Cleric feature increases the healing of spells by 2+spell level, meaning each Goodberry now heals 4hp instead of 1. That’s 40hp of healing divided as you choose for a 1st level spell slot. Designers have confirmed that this would be allowed at their tables, so I say go for it. Because the wording of Disciple of Life is slightly ambiguous, just run this by your DM first before you take this dip, as it isn’t worth it otherwise. As for spells, Bless is a good fallback concentration spell when our other control spells won’t be great, and we can pick up Guidance to boost everyone’s ability checks.
Level 9-11: Fighter 4, Ranger 5, Warlock 1, Cleric 1
We’ll take some more Fighter levels now, grabbing Action Surge which lets us cast our control spell and knock enemies around with our forced movement on the same turn, a subclass, and a feat. For subclass, we’ll take Rune Knight. This subclass gives us a couple of neat benefits, namely the runes themselves, of which I will be taking Cloud and Frost. Cloud is an obvious pick as it is one of the coolest defensive features in the game. I normally save it for when a monster scores a big crit, which I then redirect to one of its friends. Frost is normally not a first choice, but the other options call for saving throws based on our Constitution, which won’t be very high DCs. Frost instead gives us a flat +2 to Strength and Constitution checks and saving throws, with helps us maintain our concentration on spells. It’s a great bonus action to use on a turn where we’ve cast a control spell and don’t really have anything else to do with our bonus action. The main reason I really want this subclass however, is the ability to grow large and deal an extra d6 of damage once per turn. The d6 damage isn’t much but it’s appreciated nonetheless, but growing big is going to help us a ton because…
Feat: Crusher
Crusher’s 5ft push is only on creatures no more than one size larger than us, so anything huge or bigger wouldn’t be effected normally. Growing to large size means that only gargantuan creatures will be immune to our shove, greatly increasing the scope of printed monsters we can move around. This additional 5ft shove on top of our 15ft shove from Swarmkeeper means that we can either shove one creature 20ft, or shove two creatures, one for 15ft and the other for 5ft. The usefulness of this added flexibility in our forced movement is hard to quantify on paper, but in practice you will find that it opens up a wide selection of options previously unavailable to us. It also means that even if our target succeeds the save against the swarm, we can still push them at least 5ft. We will also use this feat to round up our 13 Constitution to a 14, giving us some extra HP and helping our saving throws.
Level 12-15: Fighter 4, Ranger 9, Warlock 1, Cleric 1
We continue with Ranger for a couple of reasons. Writhing Tide at 7th level gives us a flying speed of 10ft for 1 minute, and we can double that speed to 20ft with the Longstrider spell. This is helpful as it lets us fly over our own hazards like Spike Growth and Web and still attack enemies in those areas of effect. Being able to get off the ground at all also keeps us out of melee range when we don’t want to be in so close, giving us a good defensive tool as well. At Ranger level 9, we get access to 3rd level spells. I’m definitely picking up Conjure Animals, as it is the highest damage for a spell of this level with a ton of added utility. Plant Growth is an amazing spell when the environment suits it, and Revivify is always nice to have in your back pocket.
Ability Score Improvement: +2 Wisdom
We finally get our Wisdom to a 20. This increases our attack rolls, spell DC, shove DC, Wisdom saves, and a whole slew of ability checks. Don’t feel pressured into getting a 20 Wisdom early though, the feats we have taken are all much more powerful than this. We take this now because we are at a point where we have all the things necessary for our build and are just making improvements now.
Level 16: Fighter 4, Ranger 9, Warlock 2, Cleric 1
We dip back one more level into Warlock to pick up a second pact slot and a couple of invocations. I’m definitely picking up Eldritch Mind, giving us advantage on our concentration checks. As for the second, pick your favorite. I’ll take Misty Visions as I feel it is the strongest of our options, as Silent Image as a cantrip is absolutely insane if you’re creative enough. A lot of creatures at these high levels do have blind/truesight though, so you may find a different option suits you better. I mostly just want more pact slots for Goodberry.
Level 17-20: Fighter 4, Ranger 13, Warlock 2, Cleric 1
At this point, you can do whatever you want with the build. I’ve decided to finish out in Ranger, as this gives us our 11th level subclass feature, knocking enemies prone in addition to shoving them. At level 20 we get access to 4th level Ranger spells, where we will select Conjure Woodland Beings, summon 8 pixies, have half of them cast Fly on our party of 4, and the other half cast Polymorph, turning our party into flying T-rexes as we ride off into the sunset. Yes this is a real thing you can do. Normally I’d say to not do thing because it breaks the game, but we’re level 20, the Wizard has Wish, we’re allowed to have this.
To summarize, our build seeks to push enemies all around the battlefield into harmful effects created by ourself or our friends. We amplify this by making them frightened, severely limiting their movement and giving us greater control over their position. We have great defenses with half plate and a shield, we can keep enemies far away from us when we need to, and we deal okay damage. We have options to cover a wide range of combat encounters. The kind of combat support that this build provides is quite hard to replicate, and it’s all thanks to Shillelagh enabling us to focus our ability scores. This is definitely a build for a more experienced player, as the options you have each fight are vast, but pick the right one and you can completely shut down anything that comes your way.
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