The Horseman of Pestilence: Building the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in D&D 5e

[@jtrector18]

I have got to say, you really have a knack for flavor builds. I've enjoyed the Horseman series tremendously, and look forward to seeing more flavor builds in the future!

[@DnD_Daily]

Thanks! Always good to hear people are enjoying our content!

[@Черныйрусский-ь7б]

I'd create this character in another way: 1)Take mountain dwarf, swap vanilla weapon proficiency for scimitars. 2) Take undead warlock, put on medium armor, take 2 scimitars. 3) Take pact of the blade, thirsting blade and cloak of flies evocations. 4) You're now a nomadic-like warrior on the back of your spectral horse (subclass gives you phantom steed) with 2 scimitars riding through the battlefield in your dreadful form surrounded by flies. For your concentration I'd recommend Summon Undead/Shadow Spirit or spirit shroud: necrotic. Blindness/Deafness, Bane and Cloudkill are pestilence themed as well. On your 6th level you'll get the same feature as the reborn has (No food, water and air required)

[@ThespianDevil]

No one’s talking about the image of The horseman of pestilence just like running while the others have horses.

[@ChristianW1975]

Dhampir also works well with stinking cloud, if you want a different race for your build 🙂

[@shawn55648]

I'm glad it was brought to your attention that your previous builds were not accurate. I was very confused when you came out with conquest.

[@TreRiot]

I love the 4 horsemen and im new to DnD so this sounds like something that id love to play and i was writing them for a bbeg anyways and these gave me a really good idea for them

[@woutvanostaden1299]

Taking the ritual caster feat can solve mount issue with phantom steed.

[@xvader9445]

Once again you have presented an excellent build that is great from Lvl 1 and it doesn't need to be a mid level PC to have fun...thx

[@xvader9445]

Chromatic Orb would be an EXCELLENT spell to start this PC with

[@paranoid223]

An idea I’d really love to see is duo builds, builds that work really well off each other, the best one that comes to my mind is necromancer and oath breaker, but I’d really love to see some really strong and fun builds that require each other to be at full potential, if there even are any other good ones

[@marcusblacknell-andrews1783]

For this character, the "Golgari Agent" background from Ravnica is perfect. The Golgari Swarm is the best Guild to create an undead disease-spreading horseman.

[@MalloonTarka]

YAY!

[@dakotamcintire7419]

Just curious but why not use a mix of circle of spores druid with something like death domain cleric? Lot of the same spells available without that wisdom save weakness, plus some added bonuses.

[@jorenthar9186]

You'd like grim hollows Oath of Pestilence

[@woutvanostaden1299]

Grung can also work plus your immune to poison, wall of fire transmute spell into poison and spread that love. If that's not to your fancy, Fizbans chromatic dragonborn can expand on your elemental fancy once a day for a minute.

[@woutvanostaden1299]

If the whole poison doesn't effect thing is a bummer for you, as long as we stick to Fizbans chromatic dragonborn we can simply pick a different element. Acid still seems on theme to me so a black dragonborn in an acid cloud (transmuted cloud kill) could be kinda scary. If we really want to be in stinking cloud we might have to add some specific warlock (with undead being most thematic, plenty powerful - put the effect behind them, hit them, if frightened they have to take the long through the effect - and takes as relatively few lvls as needed). If it is just stinking cloud that you want to stand in, the other races that can hold their breath long enough are air genasi, tortle, lizardfolk, warforged, autognome, plasmoid and case could be made for loxodon sticking there trunk up high enough to breath, perhaps you could try to convince your DM to also allow giff (hippos being famous for holding their breath) and homebrewing a number of aquatic species to be good at holding their breath shouldn't be to hard either.

[@honeymanod]

Love your videos!

[@commentary4298]

Notably you could still have the skeleton be shaped like a warhorse by RAW, it just uses the normal skeleton stat block

[@elliotbryant3459]

animate dead needs to target a humanoid corpse [medium or small]

[@commentary4298]

@@elliotbryant3459 but it doesn’t specify how those bones are going to be arranged or even if you need all of them.

[@elliotbryant3459]

@@commentary4298 I guess a small race could use a medium skeleton as a mount unhindered [only has 10 strength so ymmv there]. A piggyback ride on a human skeleton amalgamation is kind of a departure from a skeletal warhorse though. And super fragile

[@commentary4298]

@@elliotbryant3459 it is basically just flavor at that point, especially when you consider it would need to be a controlled mount to be of any use to them.

[@justintyner9615]

As a fun fact, the Horseman of Conquest is actually the correct one biblically. There is no horseman of pestilence. Pestilence was added because Conquest was too similar to War. (It's the rider on the white horse (conquest) red horse (war) and I think it's green for famine and pale for death)

[@DnD_Daily]

Thank you, I now feel vindicated 🤣

[@williaminnes6635]

yeah Conquest represented the Parthian wars, which is why he had a bow

[@williaminnes6635]

I guess there could be a case for giving him a few Bard bits just since a Parthian shot is when you make a dick comment as you're leaving so the other person can not respond to it.

[@tonyolsson3880]

I chose the war forged race because tgis made me think of the movie 9 with the mechanical style spreading of destruction.

[@jakeparker8414]

Do you have any ideas for a good mounted archer build? I like the idea of something inspired by the Mongols but wondering how to optimise it.

[@DnD_Daily]

We'll start thinking on it and see what we can put together!

[@askyw69]

A samurai fighter with the Outlander background is very thematic and mechanically strong. Although you might have to convince your dm to include a horse with your background equipment. I personally would go a custom lineage Wood Elf and take the Elven Accuracy feat and then Sharpshooter at level 4 for the most damage. However, Mongols being Wood Elves may not fit the flavor of everyone's world.

[@jakeparker8414]

@@DnD_Daily consider me intrigued! Looking forward to your ideas as always 😊

[@970566]

Can you be a reborn centaur if we can’t use animated dead like that?

[@LoreFoundry]

Maybe. This requires a DM to agree. The description of reborn implies that you only keep the features of the lineage. I don't see why a DM won't allow you to have 4 legs. Though I believe your movement speed would be reduced and you lose that equine build.

[@ODDnanref]

@@LoreFoundry I thought you kept your speeds. You do get rid of the terrible climbing debuff though.

[@LoreFoundry]

@@ODDnanref yes it's partially true. If you started the campaign as a Centaur and then became a Reborn you would keep your Centaur movement speed. If you created a Reborn at lv 1, your speed would be 30.

[@calebgoeglein3514]

Hey amazing video, I love your stuff! I am a little confused about why you changed it from conquering to pestilence tho. As far as I can tell, the Christian Bible's first horseman is riding a white horse with a bow and a crown and he has the ability to conquer (Revelation 6:2). Pestilence is a rather modern concept added to the text because of a rather new interpretation of the Greek word φάνατος (which means death) that shows up in verse 8 of that same chapter. It was translated this way because the context seems to be talking about the "action of death," not just "death," which some translators interpreted as plague or pestilence, but there is debate about this as well since it is not clear whether this description belongs to all the horsemen or simply the last one. Wikipedia (as far as you can trust that) states that this is possibly as recent a concept as 1906, and that it has since found its way into popular media and as a result has become the current conception of the first horsemen. Anyway, I don't say any of this to get you to change anything! I loved this build and want to play it at some point, I was honestly more just confused why you said you were wrong about putting the conquering horsemen first (please tell me if I am totally just missing something)! Keep up the good work!

[@junsonofjack3740]

Nice swords. Were they always there?

[@patrickslayter9946]

Did you consider using spores druid instead of the sorcerer?

[@DnD_Daily]

Yes, but you end up with less of the flavorful spells, and the action to turn on the symbiotic entity is really bad for the subclasses action economy. It was our first option, but we ultimately leaned away from it

[@patrickslayter9946]

@@DnD_Daily That is understandable.

[@ODDnanref]

Poison Build? Ah, seems to be a necrotic build.

[@nicheva417]

Hey man, can I ask where you're getting your thumbnail art from?

[@DnD_Daily]

Google images 👍

[@Gashnaw]

That is probably because pestilence is not one of the four horsemen Conquest, Famine, War, Death.

[@coleivey4319]

Okay but hear me out, circle of spores Druid

[@DracosDiabolis]

👨‍🍳 💋 ☕️

[@michaelioannou7568]

Aww😢 I thought you gonna do a spore druid for this build

[@DnD_Daily]

Spores druid could work, you downgrade your spell selection a little, and the symbiotic entity is good but is bad for action economy, that was the decider for this build