#1: Itadori Yuji (Jujutsu Kaisen)
For our first build, we’ll be making Itadori Yuji, exterminator of cursed spirits and incidental vessel to the King of Curses!
Criteria:
Hand-to-Hand Mastery: Even without using cursed energy to reinforce his strikes, Yuji is highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat and possesses supernatural strength & stamina.
Durability: Along with his other physical qualities, Yuji has high durability to sustain the attacks that curses throw his way. He is shown to continue fighting despite grievous injuries.
Cursed Energy Manipulation: Yuji can manipulate cursed energy to use a variety of techniques, his staples being Divergent Fist for strikes with delayed secondary impact and the devastating Black Flash for a vastly amplified attack that lets out his full potential.
_____
Despite being roped into the world of sorcery, Yuji has a strange and supernatural origin himself. For the ancestry (which determines your character's physical details/origin), we’ll go with Demigod from the Weird Ancestry sourcebook (make sure to ask your Sage if they’ll allow different ancestries in their game first, of course).
We get Divine Attribute which allows us to increase one of our attributes by 1 (Strength). We also get Divine Heritage, allowing our wounds to heal without leaving scars and regrow severed body parts after a rest to represent how Yuji can recover from extreme damage due to the King of Curses within him. For our specific heritage as a Demigod, we’ll go with the Minor God option to represent Yuji’s origin.
For Yuji’s profession (which determines your character's prowess before adventuring), we’ll choose the Apprentice Magician under the academic category to line up with his time as a student at Jujutsu Tech High and understanding of the foundation of magic as cursed energy in our case. We’ll learn the Arcane language, allowing us to understand the secret language of magic.
ATTRIBUTES
Out of the 4 attributes in Shadow of the Weird Wizard, we’ll keep Strength as our highest, granting us record-setting physical abilities. Will will be our second highest to allow us to push through whatever tragedy that might befall us. Dexterity can be a third for our high speed. Finally, Intelligence will be our lowest to fit Yuji’s straightforward approach.
PATHS/LEVEL PROGRESSION
LEVEL 1 - FIGHTER
While I could make the case for using Priest for the baseline abilities of a jujutsu sorcerer, we’ll be going with Fighter as our Novice path for Yuji.
We’ll start with a natural defense of 10 and 16 health. As a Fighter, we gain Combat Training allowing us to ignore attribute requirements for weapons or armor, roll to attack with 1 boon, and on a critical success to attack we roll the damage twice and take the highest total out of the two. We can also gain Combat Recovery, allowing us to heal half of the damage we’ve taken and impose 1 bane on rolls to attack us until the end of our next turn to increase our survivability.
LEVEL 2 - FIGHTER
We get +6 health and +1d6 bonus damage (a pool of dice we can expend to increase our damage on attacks or instead expend to make additional attacks on different targets).
Most importantly, we get our first Fighting Style here and we’ll take Brawler to allow us to make unarmed strikes with 1 boon (also ignoring the usual bane imposed on them) and count them as natural off-hand weapons (which will be important for our second path). Right now, our unarmed strike deals 1d6 damage, but at level 5, we’ll deal 1d6 more damage if we wield no other weapons.
LEVEL 3 - SPELLFIGHTER
Here, we start the second tier of character progression, our Expert path. We'll delve into the Spellfighter path to put cursed energy into our attacks. As part of our Expert path, we gain the benefits of increasing two attributes by 1 (Strength and Will), +8 health, +1d6 bonus damage to bolster our attacks.
For our talent at this level, we gain Spell-Charged Weapon, after a ritual of 10 minutes, we can imbue one weapon we touch during the ritual with magical energy. While it is charged, we gain the following benefits:
We attack with 1 boon using the weapon
Impose 1 bane on rolls against our Defense (swiftly evading attacks)
When we attack with it, we can use the higher of our Intellect or Will score in place of our Strength/Dexterity (attacking with cursed energy)
Finally, on a critical success to attack using it, we roll to attack the target with 1 boon until our next turn ends (putting our opponent on the ropes)
Now. the fact that we primarily use our fists seems like it’d be a big limitation. But, the Brawler trait grants us unarmed strikes as a natural off-hand weapon that we are always wielding, meaning we can charge it with magical energy using this talent!
At this level, our path also gives us access to one magical tradition and one novice-tier spell.
We’ll go with the Symbolism tradition surrounding imbuing magic into symbols, which we can flavor as reinforcing our body with cursed energy. As part of discovering a tradition , we also get one of four magical talents within it. Out of the four, we’ll choose the Rune of War that lets us apply it to a weapon (unarmed strikes in our case), granting 1 boon while attacking with it, and dealing 2d6 extra damage since we’re level 3 and 4d6 at level 7! This lasts until we use the talent again or 1 minute (which when used in combat means it lasts the entire duration of the fight) but otherwise we can use this as much as we want.
For our novice spell in the Symbolism tradition, we’ll take Rune of Unflagging Vigor to represent our inner resolve to keep fighting. As long as we have a reaction, when any creature starts its turn, we can buff ourself for 1 minute to make Strength and Will rolls with 1 boon and impose 1 bane on rolls that other targets make against those attributes (raising our physical and magical feats). Alternatively, we can choose to apply this to one ally within 5 yards of us as we inspire them to fight at our side.
LEVEL 4 - SPELLFIGHTER
We get +8 health at this level and another novice spell, where we’ll take another casting of Rune of the Unflagging Vigor allowing us to use it twice before we have to rest to recharge it.
Here, we get the Spellstrike talent that gives our next attack 1d6 extra damage before the end of our next turn after we cast a spell – a surge of magical energy amplifying our striking power. This extra damage increases when we cast an expert (2d6) or master (3d6) spell. Right now, this won’t be the most useful due to our limited spell castings, but we’ll try to remedy that with the next few levels.
LEVEL 5 - FIGHTER
This rounds off our novice path, granting us an +1 bonus to our Armored and Natural Defense, +6 health, and +1d6 bonus damage. We also get the Power Strike ability that lets us add our level as extra damage to a successful attack once per turn as our martial expertise to damage foes.
The biggest part of this level for the build is granting us a second fighting style. To dive deeper into the depths of cursed energy, we’ll grab the Dabbler fighting style from one of the expansions (With a Faerie, Hand in Hand) to discover one magical tradition, and since we’re level 5, learn 2 novice spells.
We’ll be going with the War tradition to expand our martial maneuvers – taking Uncanny Block as our talent from this tradition to give us stronger defenses by using reaction to block an attack we see from a creature by rolling a d20 and subtracting the result from their attack roll.
For our two spells, we’ll take Martial Insights and Concussion Strike both from the War tradition. The first enhances our fighting instincts for 1 minute (also gets cast as a reaction when we attack, triggering our Spellstrike talent) by imposing 1 bane on attacks against us and increasing our total pool of bonus damage dice by 2. The second spell can be cast as a reaction when we get a success on a roll to attack, the effects of it launching a concussive wave from the target of our attack as a delayed burst of energy. The target, and any other enemies within a Size 5 space (5 x 5 tiles on a battlemap centered on the target) make a Strength roll and on failure, take 2d6 damage and get pushed back 5 yards.
LEVEL 6 - SPELLFIGHTER
We gain +8 health, one novice spell, and the Battle Casting talent which lets us cast a novice spell as part of making an attack as long as we have the casting to do so. As part of this, we can cast Concussion Strike without expending our reaction. We’ll take the spell True Strike as our fists are guided by the sparks of Black Flash, which lets us immediately roll damage against a target in reach as if we had succeeded a roll to attack and add 1d6 damage to our attack.
LEVEL 7 - BATTLE MASTER
This is where we reach the pinnacle of our potential, entering the third tier of progression as we earn our Master path – Battle Master. We’ll use this path to maximize the damage we deal to nearby targets.
We get to increase 3 attributes by 1 (Strength, Will, & Dexterity), gain +18 health, and +1d6 bonus damage.
We gain the Certain Strike talent that lets us add our level to a roll to attack a target when the result on the die shows a 5 or less.
We also get Glancing Blow to make sure no foe dodges unscathed, letting us choose to deal 1d6 damage when our attack roll with a weapon fails, increasing at level 8 (2d6 damage) and 10 (3d6 damage).
LEVEL 8 - BATTLE MASTER
At this level, we gain an additional +18 health and +1d6 bonus damage. We also get the Storm of Strikes talent to deliver blows on any number of targets within 5 yards, dealing damage based on the number of bonus damage in our supply. Unfortunately, they can also make a luck roll (flat d20 roll) to take no damage on a success, but this is a good option for damaging a group of enemies.
LEVEL 9 - SPELLFIGHTER
To finish out our training as a jujutsu student, we close out our Expert path by gaining +8 HP, +1d6 bonus damage, one expert spell, and the Bestow Magical Weakness talent.
Bestow Magical Weakness allows us to make a target vulnerable to magic when we get a critical success to attack them, lasting until they succeed on a luck roll at the end of a round. While they are vulnerable from our talent, they resist magical effects with 1 bane and take double damage from magic – including our spell-charged fists! This should also apply to our different magical talents, like our Rune of War’s extra damage.
For our expert spell, we’ll take Avalanche Strike as our final spell to blow away an enemy with an overwhelming attack by making an attack roll with +1 boon, dealing a heavy 9d6 extra damage on a success, launching a target back 5 yards on a critical success, and possibly sending them prone.
LEVEL 10 - BATTLE MASTER
At our final level, we get +18 health, +1d6 bonus damage, and the Battle Mastery & Ultimate Strike talents.
Battle Mastery imposes 1 bane on rolls to attack us and we make agility rolls with 1 boon to avoid or mitigate harm that comes our way as we’ve mastered evading or diminishing our foes' physical and magical attacks.
Ultimate Strike allows us to further increase our damage, as when we deal 25 or more damage on an attack, we can add the number we roll on the d20 as extra damage.
And that’ll be everything for Yuji!
As an overview:
We’ve got a multitude of ways to gain boons on our attack rolls and a few ways to impose banes on targets that try to harm or debilitate us. Our baseline number of boons to attack with unarmed strikes with just our talents is 4 boons and our damage is 6d6 (more damage than a great sword) as long as we have Rune of War applied to our unarmed strikes. We have 11 natural defense, a +1 to our armored defense, and 114 health total which is significant despite our dip into a specialty path.
The maximum amount of damage we should be able to deal in a single attack on our own provided we expend our action, reaction, and battle casting is 210 damage, doubled to 420 if Bestow Magical Weakness is active on a target. As long as you maximize damage, you could take the majority of monsters in the second to highest difficulty class with it alone, thought the average of this attack is 135 damage. Either way, we're a powerhouse when it comes to dishing out damage.
Because of Spellfighter, I did pass up the Martial Artist expert path, which has things like expanding our options to effectively perform maneuvers like tripping or grappling, increasing unarmed damage, or having a chance to instantly kill targets when dealing damage that pushes them over half their health total – but I felt the aspect of bolstering your strikes with magical energy was too fitting to pass up. This direction is certainly more limiting in what we can do mechanically.
We are also limited by casting options as well, as many of our spells have 1. Our best option becomes Avalanche Strike with 3 castings as our damage dealing option, and if that fails, rely on Martial Insights, Rune of Unflagging Vigor, and Combat Recovery to protect us from getting hit, afflicted, or healing from (or continuing to fight through) damage we sustain.
-----
I hope y'all enjoyed this build! I'll be back next time with another one. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way.