Command the hosts of Hell (and your allies) with this deadly and strategic illrigger subclass.
Painkillers are the commanders and strategists of the armies of Dis (one of the Archdevils of Hell). They lead from the front, charging into battle clad in armor and wielding destructive powers. In their own twisted way, painkillers are inspiring leaders, rousing devilish hosts to charge into combat with reckless abandon.
Painkillers are also a proud and vain bunch, taking great care in their appearance. They also follow a sort of chivalrous code. They will adhere to the rules of challenges in single combat, but will be gleefully arrogant as they win the contest, and will use every dirty and cheating tactic in the book if losing.
In this article, I’ve looked out how you can optimise for a painkiller as well as assessing just how good I think they are and the tactics you can use with them. Just remember, the illrigger and its subclasses are 3rd party content (created by MCDM) so check with your DM before you use them. If you want to play an illrigger, they’re available available on D&D Beyond or as a PDF.
At a glance
- Frontline warriors with enhanced attacks
- Support allies with buffs and reaction attacks
- Unleash devastating attacks with the ability to restrain and land more critical at later levels
- Adept as a party face
5/5 – Painkillers make effective strategists and frontline combatants. With the ability to grant allies easy reaction attacks, they can have some really devastating rounds of combat. But painkillers can also dish out the damage themselves with the ability to deal out reactionary punishment, more common criticals and the ability to restrain, they’re capable of being quite devastating combatants.
Painkiller features
Dispater’s blessing (Lv 3) – 3/5
You gain proficiency with heavy armor which will help a lot in making a strength build. It means that a two handed weapon style becomes a strong option for a painkiller and opens up higher damage attacks for your illrigger.
Devastator (Lv3) – 5/5
An action to command allies to use a reaction to make a weapon attack can be quite strong. Be aware that once you hit level 5, you won’t be able to use your extra attack with this, but the potential for this many extra attacks from allies is strong.
This obviously favours those with larger parties and those with harder hitting attacks. If you have a rogue in the party, this can be especially devastating as they can land a sneak attack with their reaction attacks too because sneak attack works once per turn not once per round.
Invoke hell (Lv3) – 4/5
These can only be used once per rest, but they’re both good options. Grand strategist is kind on your action economy and is great for getting vulnerable allies out of sticky situations or martials into range of the right enemies.
Punishment I’d save for really big attacks against you as it’ll have the most impact when the damage is high. This has the potential to deal some big, retaliatory damage, but this damage being high may not be too common. Just be aware that the damage is necrotic so is likely to be of less value against undead.
Dispator’s interdiction (Lv7) – 4/5
Telekinetic seal could be quite interesting against enemies that have almost used all their movement to reach you already. Pushing them might leave them out of range to attack you while knocking prone might leave them with too little movement to stand up, forcing them to remain prone for a round. You could then attempt to grapple them.
By level 18, if you knock the creature prone, you’ll have both advantage on those attacks against that creature, and will land critical hits on an 18-20. And on Dispater’s supremacy, you should mostly be focusing attacks on interdicted creatures anyway.
For by the throat, restrained is great and it’s just an addition to placing a seal anyway so no extra seals need be expended. You may want to focus your attention on large or smaller creatures as a result though.
You die on my command! (Lv11) – 4/5
A reaction to prevent an ally dropping to 0HP is quite good, and the fact that you can use it after every short rest is quite strong. Just be aware that a stray goblin arrow will be enough to knock them down again. You may just need to stay near your allies and ensure you get enough short rests each day as the painkiller has a lot of expendable powers that can be used once per short or long rest.
Deathstrike (Lv15) – 5/5
Automatic critical hits 5-6 times per long rest is absolutely devastating! Ensuring your target has a seal on them is no hard thing. The more damage you deal with your attacks, the better for this. The makes a two handed weapon a bit more appealing at this stage. If you save all of these for a final big encounter, then it could be incredibly punishing!
How good is the painkiller subclass?
The painkiller is your best illrigger option for dealing plenty of weapon damage with hard hitting attacks and a strength build. They also happen to be decent team players (for hellish bullies) and can help allies maneuver around the battlefield, make reaction attacks and survive a bit longer.
Level 3 and level 15 are when the painkiller gets some really strong features. Being able to command allies to make reaction attacks is a strong use of action economy and a handful of automatic critical hits each day can be devastating too!
For me, the painkiller is a top tier subclass for those who like their illriggers to focus on dealing damage and party tactics.
5/5
Building a painkiller illrigger
Painkillers are the brutish strategists of the illrigger subclasses. They lean towards strength builds and using high damage weaponry while supporting allies. You don’t have to build this way, but it tends to work best for a painkiller so I’ll lean into this kind of build in my recommendations below:
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Strength: Where most illriggers might struggle for a strength build, painkillers work best this way as they have heavy armor proficiency and features that benefit more from heavy hitting attacks making this one of your most important ability scores.
- Constitution: Most painkillers will want to be in the middle of the melee, which means having more resilience through constitution.
- Charisma: This affects your DC for things like interdict boons as well as your face skill capabilities. You’ll also need this for a higher DC for things like invoke Hell punishment and Dispater’s interdiction.
Options to avoid
- Dexterity: You can go with a dexterity build for a painkiller, but they work best with strength, and if you’ve built for strength, then you might as well dump dexterity.
- Wisdom: You should dump wisdom, you’ve got too many other ability scores to focus on.
- Intelligence: The same goes for dumping intelligence.
| Ability score | Point Buy | Standard Array |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 15 | 15 |
| Dexterity | 8 | 10 |
| Constitution | 15 | 13 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 8 |
| Wisdom | 8 | 12 |
| Charisma | 15 | 14 |
Skills
Recommended options
- Athletics: Good option if you’ve gone for a strength build, especially as you can’t grab acrobatics through your class.
- Deception: As a potential party face and agent of hell, deception makes a strong option for an illrigger.
- Insight: Your wisdom likely won’t be great, but you may need to be the party face, in which case, a decent insight can be useful.
- Intimidation: Another good face skills, especially for an evil leaning class.
- Persuasion: Usually the most important face skill and another important one for a party face.
- Options to avoid
- Arcana: Your lack of intelligence means there are likely to be better options for knowledge skills, especially as you’re better off focusing on face skills.
- Investigation: similarly, you’ll lack the intelligence to be much good at this.
- Religion: Another knowledge skill you’ll lack the intelligence to be good at.
- Stealth: If you’ve gone for a strength build, dexterity won’t be your forte, so stealth isn’t the thing for you to focus on. If you have gone for a Dex build though, this could be a decent option.
Races
As a painkiller, you’ll likely want your race to help you with certain aspects of your build including:
- Party face: Illriggers make a good option for a party face, but need a bit of help becoming competent at this. Face skill proficiencies and other features that improve your charisma capabilities will be useful for an illrigger.
- Toughen up: Most painkillers do best on the frontlines as a melee martial build. That means anything you can do to increase resilience will be beneficial.
- Damage dealing: You also want to deal as much damage as possible meaning traits that can improve this will help.
- Innate spellcasting: Most painkillers will have a decent or high charisma, making innate spellcasting a viable option. They aren’t the best for innate spellcasting as they can’t repeat cast spells, but can be decent at it.
Recommended options
- Changeling: If you want to lean into the party face aspect of the class, then Changeling is a great option. Grab a couple of face skill proficiencies and be able to change your appearance. Great for a high charisma painkiller.
- Dragonborn: Breath weapon gives you some crowd control and only costs one of your attacks. You also get a resistance and more depending on the type of Dragonborn you take.
- Dwarves: The extra constitution and resistances are welcome to toughen you up. Hill Dwarf will get you more hit points, but you’ll have to take an extra wisdom which won’t be useful. Mountain will get you +2 strength which is great for a strength build, but armor training is no good on an painkiller that already has those proficiencies.
- Forest Gnome: Even more resilience for saving throws, the minor illusion cantrip and the ability speak with small beasts.
- Goliath: Cold resistance and some reduced damage is handy for the extra resilience.
- Hobgoblin: Help as a bonus action with extra bonuses works well for the illrigger which tends to be light on bonus action options unless you take certain interdict boons. Plus you can grab some resilience, damage or speed from this. A boost to failed d20 rolls is great for more resilience and damage too.
- Human (variant): An extra skill proficiency and a feat are handy, especially as that skill can help you flesh out those face skills.
- Orc: Bonus action dash and temporary hit points to close the gap in melee and for some extra resilience and survive being knocked to 0HP too.
- Shifter: Grab intimidation proficiency, a bunch of temporary hit points and some bonus effects like an AC boost, a bonus action attack or improved wisdom saving throws.
- Warforged: Warforged have a bunch of resilience features like improved AC, resistance to poison, advantage against the poisoned condition and more.
Backgrounds
Primarily, you want your background to pad out your skills and with a party face requiring quite a few face skills, you’ll likely want to pad this out through your background.
I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a painkiller:
| Name | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Courtier | Insight, persuasion | None | 2 of your choice |
| Faceless | Deception, intimidation | Disguise kit | 1 of your choice |
| Faction agent | Insight and 1 intelligence, wisdom or charisma skill | None | 2 of your choice |
| Gambler | Deception insight | Gaming set | 1 of your choice |
| Smuggler | Athletics, deception | Vehicles (water) | None |
| Soldier | Athletics, intimidation | Gaming set, vehicles (land) | None |
Feats
From level 4 (or at level 1 if you’re playing a Human) you can grab a feat in place of an ability score increase. I’d suggest the following are some of your better options for a painkiller:
- Fighting initiate: Grab a fighting style to complement your combat mastery.
- Great weapon master: Some bonus action attacks (which combines nicely with terrorising force) and some higher damage, but less accurate attacks with heavy weapons.
- Heavy armor master: Reduced damage from certain types of attacks when wearing heavy armor makes you a fair bit more resilient.
- Inspiring leader: Quite a lot of temporary hit points for the party every rest, especially if you’re a high charisma build.
- Lucky: More reliable d20 tests.
- Polearm master: A great option, especially with terrorising force which will enhance damage further for each attack you make. This guarantees an option for a bonus action attack each turn and makes opportunity attacks with your reaction much more likely. This combines really well with the swift retribution interdict boon for the potential of double reaction attacks too.
- Resilient: Some more resilience for another saving throw.
- Sentinel: More opportunity attacks means you get the effects of terrorising force more often and with swift retribution, you can do this more often too.
- Tough: More hit points means more resilience, great for a melee martial.
Weapons
Illriggers are capable of fighting with any type of weapon they want. Much of your choice will depend on the combat mastery you take. Brutal will mean using two handed weapons, inexorable means taking any kind of melee weapons and unfettered is good for ranged builds.
Painkillers tend to work best as strength builds making two handed weapons a better option here. If you’re going for a strength build, you’ll probably want to dump dexterity which means ranged weapons are out, but thrown weapons can be a good option instead.
If you want to be more defensive, then you can go for a sword and shield build instead taking something like a longsword or battleaxe.
Armor
If you’re a strength build, then you’ll want to use heavy armor. Plate is best once you can afford it. Before then, go for splint or chainmail.
A dexterity build can work for a painkiller, in which case, go for studded leather which will allow you to be stealthy too
If you want to be more defensive, you can also pick up a shield at the expense of some damage output.
Bravado is an option for a painkiller that wants to go with a high AC unarmored build, but that requires significant investment in ability scores and will likely mean lower damage than a strength build will give.
Other class guides
Not sure a painkiller is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other class and subclass guides.
