Bugbear
by Prince Phantom
Perhaps the race with the most misleading name, Bugbears resemble neither bugs nor bears, but are rather a tall goblinoid covered in hair with disproportionally long limbs. Yeah, they’re not exactly lookers, but if you can look past their scary face you’ll find one of the strongest build-around races in the game. Let’s see why.
Bugbear Features
Darkvision: Always good to have.
Fey Ancestry: Oh yeah, these guys are also native to the Feywild, because apparently all goblinoids are tied to that realm now. Weird lore, but I’ll take advantage on saves versus charm effects all day long.
Powerful Build: Helps strength builds do strength things, and this really helps in campaigns that track carrying capacity, but far fewer tables track that nowadays.
Sneaky: Proficiency in stealth is great and all, but pay close attention to the second part of this feature. This lets us move and stop in spaces where only a small creature could normally fit, and notable doesn’t limit our own size when using this. That means if you somehow grow to gargantuan size, you can still fit inside a small space, which is absolutely hilarious. I just envision one of your party members carrying around a small barrel and you just jumping out as an absolute giant whenever needed. It’s like the most deadly jack-in-the-box ever. Brilliant!
Long-Limbed: This increases the reach of attacks we make on our turn by 5ft. That’s an incredibly unique feature, as the only other way I’m aware of to increase reach is through the Rune Knight Fighter (and probably some niche spells I’m forgetting), and even then only at high levels. How exactly to best use this is interesting. Note that it only affects attacks we make on our turn, so this doesn’t combo with Sentinel or other opportunity attack shenanigans. I would probably pair this with a reach weapon to get a 15ft attack range, and then probably go with a martial focused build. Exactly how impactful this is can be hard to envision, but as someone who’s seen it in play, attacking at this long of range is incredibly useful, allowing you to pick targets more easily and disengage from combat without worry.
Surprise Attack: Reread this feature a few times. Let it really sink in. Your mind probably immediately goes to all the many ways you can build for and around this. First off, we want to build for a decent Initiative bonus to make sure we have some targets for our bonus damage. We could build a dexterity based character, take the Alert feat, pick a subclass that boosts our initiative, or cast Gift of Alacrity on ourselves. I’d recommend doing two of these things, but no more. We only need to win Initiative, beating everyone by 20 doesn’t make a difference. Next, we need to find out how to make as many attack roles as possible on round one of combat. That means setup is out of the question unless we can get geared up before combat even begins. The best way to do this with a weapon is to take the Gloom Stalker ranger multiclassed with a few levels of fighter, using a bonus action attack feat like Polearm Master or Crossbow Expert, giving you 7 attacks on round one by level 7 (how fitting). If you want to go for a spellcaster build, both Scorching Ray and Eldritch Blast can fit the bill. For Scorching Ray, a War Wizard gives a bonus to initiative rolls, and a 2 level dip in Fighter lets you cast Scorching Ray twice in one round. Since Scorching Ray upcasts to give you a new ray for each level, that adds a ton of damage. Normally I don’t think Scorching Ray is that good of a spell, but this race changes that entirely. Eldritch Blast users will want to have both some Sorcerer levels or Metamagic Adept for Quicken Spell, and two Fighter levels for Action Surge. As low as level 5, you could be firing 6 blasts on round one, scaling higher as your Eldritch Blast scales. As you can see, there are a number of ways to take advantage of this, and all of them make for characters who deal huge damage on round one. This lets you take out priority targets before they get a chance to act, massively swinging combat in your favor.
If you build towards their strengths, Bugbears feel unstoppable. No other race can compete with the levels of damage this is contributing. The builds I’ve briefly mentioned so far are good on their own, but the Bugbear makes them amazing. Not many races have the build around potential that this one does, and I highly recommend giving this a shot. Pumping out 100+ damage on round one at low level play is a heck of a drug.
Final Rating: 5/5
Bugbear (Legacy)
The old Bugbear is significantly worse than the revision, mostly because the surprise attack feature can only be applied once per combat. There no reason to pick this over the revised version, even if you don’t plan to take advantage of surprise attack.
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