Maximum Damage Martial at High level

[siegfriedliner]

I have recently played some martials at high level and they legit felt massively powerful which is a great change from earlier edition.

But I had a look at the martial builds I had seen in play that did all the damage and here are some comanalities.

Group Damage:

If you want to do a lot of damage to a fairly sized group of enemies as a martial and aren't a weapon inventor then your best bet is reach (ideally supplemented by level 4 enlarge) and whirlwind attack and reach (enlarge) and combat reflexes, boundless reprisals, disruptive stance.

Both of these can do your melee damage with appropriately scaled reach in a 25ft radius around your huge form. I once caught 10 enemies in a whirlwind attack as giant barbarian and did 1000ish damage.

But the attack of opportunity build can also do great damage and stop anyone casting spells near you (all praise the masterful disruptive stance). At high levels it's once of the most impressive control builds in the game against some bosses who rely on spells and concentration effects it can entirely defang them.

I remember one boss who was in my fighters reach who tried to cast a spell was disrupted, tried to cast another spell was disrupted and entirely wasted their turn.

So that is how to do the most damage total as maritial against multiple enemies.

As for single target damage, there are few more good options.

Reaction builds are still great you can knockdown an enemy hitting and damaging them and debuffing them for your next swing and get an nice full map strike odd turn. You can achieve a similar effect with opportune backstab on a rogue.

But unlike for multiple enemies there are a few more good options, multi attack builds can do great damage against enemies without resistance, the king of these builds are the duel weapon flurry ranger who can fairly reliably make six attacks at the very late levels at a -2 penalty and the two weapon fighter who does slightly few attacks but at better accuracy. The only downsides to this setup is you ideally really need to ensure all your property runes are adding d6 of damage and triggering vulnerabilities to be reach your peak effectiveness.

But if you are like me and really like big numbers and lots of attack rolls to mitigate my poor luck with dice this is the build for you.

So what's the most damage you have done with a martial and whilst moatly discount one big bit builds because of my appalling luck with dice have anyone found much success with one of those ?.

[Sagiam]

I never saw it played, but during the Exemplar playtest, I discovered something that could do 10000+d6 damage at level 17.

It involves a bag of rats.

[Tridus]

My son played a power attack Greatsword Kobold Fighter. You don't get a lot of swings, but they hit real hard. Good times. It's not the "optimal" Fighter, but for a 10 year old, rolling 14d12 is really what you want out of an attack. :D

This was extra fun as there was a Warrior Bard in the party, so the Fighter was getting Courageous Assault. You don't get power attack on that, but that extra attack on the Bard's turn with no MAP does real work.

Most damage was on an Agile Grace Pick Fighter, though. More attacks, more chances to crit, and Fatal is just rough when it crits. Another Warrior Bard in that party (my groups love Bards) and it was consistently flattening things. He had Ranger & Twin Takedown for the extra strikes.

Ranged martial, the biggest hit I saw was a Sniper Gunslinger in Ruby Phoenix. That was a crit on Vital Shot from Stealth with Greater Elemental Ammo. IIRC it was a greater striking dueling pistol, so the damage was 9d10 (extra die from vital shot, then fatal d10), plus 6d6 persistent bleed (crit vital shot), plus 6d4 persistent acid (crit greater elemental ammo). That requires a lot of things to line up to work, but oof.

All time single turn damage peak I ever saw was a Bard, though: bunch of enemies riding mounts that were packed into Telekinetic Bombardment AoE. They did not have good reflex saves. It was something like 800 damage.

[Dubious Scholar]

Sagiam wrote:

I never saw it played, but during the Exemplar playtest, I discovered something that could do 10000+d6 damage at level 17.

It involves a bag of rats.

Until it was fixed, the higher level energy mutagens could do actual infinite damage (or however many dice your GM decided "forever" counted as, anyways) on an alchemist.

[Deriven Firelion]

My highest damage has been with one big hit magus builds. Highest single target hit is 349 damage with a starlit span magus using an amped Imaginary Weapon spellstrike.

After that, probably a giant barbarian whirlwind strike martial.

Dual wield flurry rangers do some brutal damage. So much that you have go after separate targets or they'll just do a ton of blow through damage and wasted attacks.