The Three Bears: D&D Build  

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Can't wait for the Goldilocks build!

Astarion would love this build

Man I kinda love that Baby Bear scales so well. Momma and Poppa really seeing their little guy flourish ♥

This week's concept art was one of Randall's best pieces for your videos. Super cool, mad props

I do not know why, but the last 3 levels to me scream going with a bear-totem Barbarian to really lay it on thick with the Bear-tastic theming of this build. 😅 Yet another beaut of a build, papa-bear Colby. 🐻

I love how you mention you'll do more BG3 videos with some degree of guilt! I am sure your regular fans are very happy to see your channel do so well with the BG3 videos and all the new fans who can get converted to D&D through it, like a gateway drug.

Conjure animals could actually work really well for this build, not for the 8 beasts option, but for the 1 or 2 You could summon an additional two brown bears to get 4 bears, or if you wanted to stick with the Goldilocks theme you could summon one cave or polar bear!

Found you cause of baldurs gate 3, but im sticking around its really calming to listening to your build videos haha

I think that if I were going to play this from level 1, I would actually start Druid. That makes the first bear at level 2, second bear at level 3 and thus not have the permanent companion until level 6. This would also make the first two levels a little nicer because you can use cantrips from the start thus always relying on wisdom instead of dex.

Another great video. I'm surprised that you missed the opportunity to make the base character to be Goldilocks herself. 😉 Goldilocks is the three bears. Monsters come across her, thinking to themselves what a cute, defenseless little blonde child. Then boom! She becomes a bear with her bear friends. So much fun. 😂

Wow, Randall knocked it out of the park this week!

As a kobold moon druid, all my wild shapes are dinosaurs, sure it uses the stats of a dire wolf, but its a large ancient postosuchus. Flavour is free.

"What's the question, doesn't matter the answer is always BEARS!!" - Colby. Great video again dude.

I really want the Dungeon Dudes to do a review video after they finish all their multiclass ranking videos where they just give feedback on all of your "inspired by" builds.

For your comments in the beginning on the trouble of a druid/ranger, I agree! It's like an inverted version of cleric/paladin where both have very different problems facing a build, even though they should thematically fit.

So... with custom lineage, couldn't you technically look like a bear to begin with? So, wild shaping into a bear would actually be like a "Frenzy mode" or something. I love this build!

finally a build where the Witchlight Hand background makes narrative sense. not that any background couldn't ever go with any build for any reason, but i particularly like when it's not a huge stretch.

37:10 Yes! As someone who plays a Beastmaster for years, this bummed me a lot! That's why I like the OneDND Beastmaster so much, their version of Exceptional Training is actually amazing!

Excited for the eventually Baulders Gate video. Might not get as many views though. XD

Perfect timing! I was just working on a goblin wolf tamer (beastmaster/shepherd druid), love your advice on leveling up

One of my favorite novel is the three-body problem so everytime you said the class name I wanted it so badly to be called “the three-bear problem”

I love you went from "thinking" about making a bg3 video to pushing back this video for bg3 videos 😂 Also a whole party of this would be fun in game, just a pack of bears ravaging a goblin camp

I would 100% play this character. Been wanting to play a character with multiple pets for awhile.

This is probably one of the most fun concepts you’ve come up with. The art was beautiful too.

Personally, as fun as having 3 bears seems, I think I'd go straight beastmaster ranger and have the character be Goldilocks and the companion baby bear with the backstory goal of finding papa and mama bear who were wrapped up in whatever plot the campaign has going on. This would be a great character for a Wild Beyond the Witchlight game either way

My username has never been more relevant

I love the variable lighting in each videos. So cool.

The 3 Bears: D&D Build #144 Level 1:(see above) [ranger 1 & race] Silvery Barbs Mob (@8:35) Level 2:(see above) [ranger 2 & fighting-style] Level 3:(@14:08) [ranger 3 & sub-class] Level 4:(@17:27) [druid 1] Level 5:(@18:49) [druid 2 & sub-class] Level 6:(@21:54) [druid 3] Level 7:(see above) [druid 4 & ASI] Level 8:(@29:42) [druid 5] Level 9:(@20:13) [druid 6] Level 10:(see above) [ranger 4 & ASI] Level 11:(@34:10) [ranger 5] Level 12:(@35:44) [ranger 6] Level 13:(@36:24) [ranger 7] Level 14:(see above) [ranger 8 & ASI] Level 15:(@40:50) [ranger 9] Level 16:(@41:38) [ranger 10] Level 17:(@43:24) [ranger 11]

I always love when a fun concept comes together and turns into a fun and relatively powerful build

So a party of this build, bear barbarian, archfey warlock with beast speech, and perhaps a Glamour Bard as our Goldilocks.

Cool build! I always loved your Pokémon master, and this feels like a new version of that

Can you make the best Book Nerd? I've daydreamed about Scribes wizard and Tome Warlock for awhile, since they're both so book-focused. Toyed with it a couple times and almost went with the Ritual Caster feat to take the place of one or the other classes, but it sacrifices so much to the theme. Could it be good?

I love the concept behind this build 😊

Already know I'm going to love this build!

This is an adorable build, fresh, solid, sustainable, playable, and with a lot of room for support/utility/fun. Thank you!

Great video as aways man, I almost cry every ending when you wish us a great week or to hang in there if things are not so good.. Realy, thanks.

I can't believe this doesnt have more views. This is super funny

I've been watching a lot of your content lately because of your BG3 videos. You're so much fun and very easy to listen to! Plus your quality & production is awesome! Keep it up!!

Only just through the intro...but i'm already SO excited... LOL

Excellent build!!!

Another benefit of this build over the Shadow Balde or EK/BS builds is that you get to make exponentially more bear puns! Da Bears!

Love what you do Colby. So many builds, so little D&D. I couldn't not make this as a Bugbear. 4 bears for fun.

As for the first question, "character inspired by a fairy tale", yes! A Snow White character. Mostly relying on Swarmkeeper ranger (the swarm is made of birds and small forest critters), with the Conjure Woodland Beings spell (satyrs being reflavored as some kind of redcap).

man...this makes me want to go back and literally just binge your whole back catalogue... Glad BG3 and the algo put you in front of me.

I am definately trying this build out!

What a fun character concept! Excited to try it out!

I totally love this build conceptually and mechanically ❤ My favourite animal is bear and three bears are better than one. I can't wait to try this build. Love from Spain 😊❤

Jesse is ABSOLUTELY momma bear and an all-around great guy.

Just wanna say I love the lighting and the set up today. It looks fantastic

Adorable build today!

If i was the DM for this character...i would give them some homebrew items: The Claw Insignia of Fire, the Fang Insignia of Ice and the Life Flow Insignia. Insignia of Fire: Adds 1d8 fire damage to melee attacks and succesful grapples, and immolates the target for 1 minute on such succesful hits/checks. Immolated targets take 1d4 fire damage per round untill it ends or uses an action to put the fire out. The Insignia of fire also adds the user's Wisdom score to all their melee attacks and gives a +2 to hit and damage on such attacks, granting one additional attack each 6 levels of the user when they take the attack action or use multiattack. Insignia of Ice: Adds 1d8 cold damage an frostbites the target for 1 minute on a hit. Frostbitten targets lose half their movement speed untill they use the dash or disingage action. Give also +2 to attacks. An immolated target who gets frostbitten, or vice versa, becomes smoldering, which is a mixture of both conditions, plus 1d4 cold damage when the immolation procs. Life flow Insignia: On a critical hit, the user may choose a creature they can see within 30 feet and restore their hit points by 1d6, if the creature is at full health those become temporary hit points instead. If the target is smoldering, the attack needs only hit to proc the restoration effect. The life flow insignia also causes a creature summoned by a spell to remain without need of concentration on the spell which summoned it and allows the summned creature to remain untill destroyed or dismissed, but the spell slot used to summon them cannot be recovered untill they are dismissed. And thus...with these three items, Papa Bear sets the enemy on fire making them too hot, Mama Bear frostbites the enemy making them too cold, and Baby Bear finds them...juuuuuuust right~ Overpowered...yes, would be fun as heck to help my player realise this build to perfection tho. i would probably add even more power to the insignia of fire to make sure Papa Bear keeps up as we went if it still proved not enough...would have to see how it performs in game to see what else i'd add to it...maybe reduce the damage die values if it proved too much but i think these numbers are okay. Maybe i'll give Papa Bear a fire-based Spirit Shroud spell since the life flow insignia makes baby bear stay without need for concentration...we'd have to see how its performing in game, as long as they don't betray the concept, we'd make it work.

This build is unBEARable and a ROARing good time. I love seeing more ranger builds with different subclasses

I was literally theory crafting a build like this about 2 months ago. I am glad to see you figured it out...

Thank you thank you for this! I'm actually deep into BG3 right now and took this idea to make a wolf pack...Ranger/Druid + Summon Beast (via mod) taking advantage of pack tactics!

Such an interesting concept - Thank you, you always bring the goods

I remember in one of the Dungeon Dudes videos they talked about an Artificer Battlesmith/Ranger Beastmaster multiclass to have two permanent bear companions, albeit one mechanical. I was secretly hoping for yet another additional bear. xD Though without home brewing it would be very clunky trying to command them all at once.

The art this week spoke to me in my love for the classic Brother Beat movie.

This is amazing! I already know what game I want to use this in!

This is a great build for my next NPC. Randal is really stepping up his game. This is his best one yet!

Brilliant! Going into this I was wondering if you were going to get to third bear by the level 6 damage report and sure enough you continue to impress. I love it when a plan comes together!

Levels 18-20: barbarian bear totem, clearly. More HP, and if somehow, baby bear gets taken out while you’re wild shaped, you’ve got a way to become even tankier

What a freakin fun build!!!

i need that range rogue dual handcrossbow deep dive, that you talked about, in my life now xD

I had this idea and pitched it to my friend a few weeks ago. He thought it was a bad idea. Guess I'll have to really try it now.

A straight moon druid could do three bears by level 5, using the spell that you hate. You could conjure two bears with conjure animals right at level five.

I decided to take Mage Armor with a feat. Worked out great while in animal forms. haha Telepathy also allows for the no-talking thing haha

2:00 Love the bear, be the bear. I connect so much with those guys!

@DnDDeepDive Hey Colby, been following your work basically since the days you firmly believed that custom lineage should have access to the racial feats. Yup, looong time. Anyway this is the first time I felt the need to send a build challenge your way, my hope is merely that you would take it into consideration. The build challenge: A pact of the blade warlock focusing primarily on Str and dipping barbarian. Synergy we're looking into is rage damage reduction combined with upcasting armor of agathys, which doesn't require concentration and can reliably be cast outside of combat. Build I came up with is bear totem barbarian 3 for superior damage reduction and X levels of fiend warlock for extra tankiness through extra temporary hp. By no means do you need to take up the same path, in fact I would be shocked if you didn't do more multiclassing ❤

I actually came up with a similar combination when watching episode 40: The Moon Druid I styled it not as three bears but three white wolfs with my beastmaster moon druid being inspired by princess mononoke, with the shillelagh quarterstaff being reskined as her spear. The animal companion was the mother Moro and to summon the second beast, San through out the skin of her dead brother she was wearing as a cloak. The cloak turned into her brother, temporarily reviving him.

Never have I wanted to do one of your builds more than this one. Right up my alley and so creative!

Got a build idea: the best sausage master. A BG3 build that dual wields sausages. Maybe one handed. Maybe thrown. All up to you. Whats the strongest build you could make?

LOL. I saw this title and immediately thought of my current character plus a bear comanion of some sort. I'm playing a Bugbear who is also a Werebear. :D It started out as a joke -- "what if I could be a werebear too, so I could be a Bugbear, which is NOT a bug and NOT a bear, but SOMETIMES be a real bear?" -- and led to my DM saying "wait, well, what ARE the rules for being a Werebear?" And we did research and put it together, and we kept it a secret from the rest of the party for the first few weeks of the campaign because Werebear has learned that many people in the world are violently against were-creatures, even good ones. Until the first full moon, when I involuntarily changed, and then had to leave my tent because the party got attacked in the night. If I threw in some sort of bear companion, I'd have 3 bears, although 2 of them would just be me. :D Next level I finally get Arcane Trickster, so I'll be able to have a familiar if I want. Maybe I'll ask if I could re-skin something as some sort of bear. Not anything that would make it more powerful than a typical familiar, of course. Maybe a koala. Koalas are sort of my totem or identity animal. So that would be special to me, plus a big tough Bugbear with a sweet sleepy little baby Koala familiar would be sort of adorable, I think. :) Not the most useful form for a familiar, but it can always change forms occasionally if needed, and also we already have one familiar in the party that's usually a crab (Leonardo da Pinchy) but spends a lot of time lately as a spider, which is SUPER useful for scouting ahead and being effectively invisible. (Who notices a spider on the ceiling or high on the wall? Nobody.). I did Beast Master last campaign (my first time playing). Used the UA version, which was MUCH MUCH better, and I'm sad that they retired that one -- I don't know why they did and I don't think any of the "Fixes" I've seen since have been anywhere near as good (although I don't think I've actually seen the *most* recent, at this point -- I'm not sure). My DM also made one additional change for me -- I had the choice of either using my beast's reaction attack OR using an extra attack myself. For flavor, I much preferred using my beast's attack, of course, but there were SO MANY TIMES that the beast was not in position to make an attack that it was feeling really unfair, because all the other combat players had multiple attacks, while I had one attack and only got another attack via my beast maybe 1 time out of maybe 3, simply because they only got to attack IF they happened to be adjacent to an enemy when I attacked, which NEVER was the case at the start of a fight. It would typically take a dash to get them in position to attack and then they could attack on the third turn, by which point there would only be a few attacks left before the end of the fight. Plus, their attack was much weaker than mine, especially later in the game, since even though the UA ranger let the beast level up SOMEWHAT, its attacks didn't seem to level up as much as everyone else's. So it was feeling for a while there like while everyone else had a solid 2 attacks, I had more like 1.25. It felt MUCH more fait when we made the rule that I could take another attack when my beast didn't. (Which meant in theory I could just choose to always use it myself for the stronger attack, but in practice I preferred to use the beast, because why would I want to HAVE the beast and not use it? No fun in that.) Oh, we also wound up using a feat later on that I think came from a homebrew that let me upgrade my beast into something with a higher CR, which did improve its attack considerably, and improved things a lot. And for flavor, we made it so my panther just grew huge and took on scaled-up stats which my DM figured out by looking at some of the larger creatures that the feat would have allowed and the panther's original stats. I went off for a day and did a ritual, buned some materials, and came back with my panther suddenly huge. That was great. :) Oh, and his name was Puppy. Puppy the Panther.

I really love your running gag with the silvery barbs mob

Would love to see the most OP Robin Hood build Colby could make, with a style emphasis from the newest Robin Hood film's combat style

Hey Colby, I can't play BG3 yet, but I put together what I'm probably going to do as my first build, and thought you might like it. I was inspired a little by your whirling dervish Ranger/Rogue Level 1 Fighter using strength with the dual wielding fighting style looking for double light weapons as quick as possible Level 2-4 Multi into Rogue all the way to Thief 3 for the juicy double bonus action. Level 5 Multi into Monk. Doesn't add quite that much right now, but bursting for 4 attacks from our bonus actions in one round via flurry of blows is nice. Kinda like action surge but we get it back every short rest. Level 6 Take Rogue to level 4 for Tavern Brawler. Our strength score will go up by one which should take us to 18 with a +4 modifier, and we'll double that modifier when we add it to our attack and danage rolls with our unarmed strikes. Which means bye bye scimitars hello shield and fist. Might respecc here to change my fighting style (apparently duelist applies to unarmed attacks via the wiki, so if so, we might switch to that). Level 7-8 I'm a bit undecided here. There's no real bad options, but I don't want to add a feature I'm gonna really miss when I respecc at level 9. I'm thinking just more fighter levels for action surge and maybe Champion's crit window. Level 9 Whatever choice I made before is getting respecced for Fighter 1/Rogue 2/Open Hand Monk 6 or Fighter 1/Thief Rogue 3/Open Hand Monk 5. I haven't crunched the numbers better, but I think the manifestation and wholeness of body abilities at Open Hand 6 might be worth more than what 2 bonus actions base even with flurry of blows can provide. So a little help here would be nice. Level 10 Whichever class we didn't choose at 9 between Monk and Rogue gets it's level now. Level 11 The obvious answer here is take Fighter to level 2 for Action Surge, but I think the better option might be respeccing and getting rid of Fighter to go Barbarian 2. We'll lose our fighting style and ability to wear heavy armor, but we get +2 damage from raging, Reckless Attack, and resistance to physical damage. I think that's a fair trade. Level 12 We have 2 main options here. Thief Rogue to 4 to increase our strength score to 20, and Barbarian to 3 to go Wildheart for those juicy bear resistances. With the presence of magic items that just take scores past 20 I think the second option is better. As an aside if I were to find whatever the BG3 equivalent is for a belt of giant strength is it might also be worthwhile to go back to Fighter for the dueling style (if it applies like it says on the wiki to unarmed attacks) here instead of Barb 3. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this build. I have crunched the numbers a little, and boy am I impressed by this thing at every level. I really wanted a strong in combat strength build that had good out of combat utility, and I think I nailed it. Might call it the Captain America build.

No need for a Pre-Video guess from me REALLY, but I did have a fun thought: I don't know the race yet, but I would pick a Summer Eladrin (yes, you can change seasons, but it's the most thematic). Why? You can flavor being surrounded by an air of yarrow and phlox flowers. And since your bears don't really exist without you, you could call the build: Goldie Phlox is the Three Bears.

TGIT! Thanks Colby!

Thanks Colby!

I'm not a fan of silvery barbs, but silvery bobs sounds like something I could get onboard with!

Thank you for your information video

It is kinda funny that Colby taking Custom Lineage feels fresh xD (it has been so long!)

I've wanted to play fairy tale/ folklore characters in DnD ever since watching The 10th Kingdom.

I mapped out a build very similiar to this just with shepard druid and only 2 “bears”. Unfortunately I am a forever DM so I have yet to use it. But I also took ritual caster to also (hoepfully) get a phamtom steed. Flavored as a tribal warrior whos tribe believe they became spiritual beasts upon death. So he will call upon his ansestors to fight with him. His animal companion being his younger brother who died young, and he has set off to revive his Brother.

Bears are my favorite animal. Thank you.

Always love your stuff ! Awesome..as usual 😅

With Dueling, Shillelagh, and Extra Attack, your DPR would ironically increase when you're knocked out of your Cave Bear form (due to an increase in both your chance to hit and the damage dealt if you hit with both attacks). RAW, it wouldn't break your existing grapple even against a Huge creature (RAI, you should at least forego wielding a shield though). With expertise in Athletics, you have a good chance of maintaining the grapple, especially if you allocate the 4 remaining points to start with 12 Strength. Of course, you hope to stay in Papa Bear form for character concept and survivability, but I would double down on the playstyle by starting with Dueling and Resilient (Wisdom) at 1st level instead of Archery and Fey Touched, since bears can't cast Silvery Barbs or Misty Step anyway. Resilient isn't a repeatable feat, so you would then need War Caster instead of Resilient (Constitution), but War Caster is better at protecting your Concentration on Baby Bear and it wouldn't increase your Con mod until picking up Chef at 14th level anyway.

As usual, I agree with your lax view of the Dungeon Dudes' rules. The reason their rules are important is that they force the analysis to consider a new thing each time. For example, the paladin/warlock is different from the warlock/paladin, despite the fact that they are made by combining the same two classes. This lets them fill out each video completely, but doesn't help your builds at all. So, in short, keep it up!

Out of curiousity, if we broke from the build slightly at level 8 and start using Conjure Animals to summon more and more bears, would the build do any better? It would still fit the bear theme if we chose to only summon the bear options and I would love to have an army of bears on my side lol.

Just passing by because Spotify don’t have a comment section. Since I found out there is a podcast version I started listening to it on the gimme / while driving, thanks for making it

I loooooove this build

As a bit of supporting lore for druids wearing scale mail, druids of the goddess Mielikki in the Forgotten Realms took oaths that were not as stringent. This allowed Druids to wear any armor that rangers would wear. The supporting sidebar is in the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting for third edition in the classes section for Druids.

I’ve thought of this build with Polymorph and Trickery Domain creating a 4 Wolf Pack from level 7. Just the attacks might be worth it but everything will be very easy to kill off.

Wow, in Glass Cannon podcast(pathfinder rpg play podcast) there was a character called four bears! This build reminded me of him!

The Dimension 20 season on this premise was great. Sorry about the redundancy.

What does everyone think of making this build a Goldilocks + Bears build by going straight beastmaster and using summon beast and then eventually conjure animals for 2 bears at level 9? You could flavour the familiar as a baby bear until then. Obv the 3 bears comes online later and they are weaker than baby bear, but mama will be srronger and you have a full PC ranger to use a spoon shaped 'shortsword' (or a bow... fine).

This does happen often but the role playing potential of this build excited far more the mechanical benefits and optimization. I have so many ideas for how ridiculous or how serious I could play this character, there are just so many options.

The bear love quote immediately made me think of Baldur's Gate 3. Reilient? Didn't know that was a word before today. ;) This build makes me miss 3.5 and PF1e even more. The pack lord druid (PF1) and the beastmaster prestige class (3.5) can give you so many animals. If you mixed the two together, you could get so many bears. They'd all be weak as hell, but story wise it'd be awesome. Nice to see that there's some way to get that here too. Recently re-watched Puss in Boots 2, so it's fitting that you're making this video.

Thanks Colby

Unbearably amazing!