Here's a challenge for the good people of D&D Beyond: How can you make a Barbarian as much like a Wizard as possible (without multiclassing into wizard)? Have fun!
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Multiclass into Warlock and take Pact of the Tome with the according invocations? Multiclass into Sorcerer and take the Ritual Caster feat? Just take the Ritual Caster feat without multiclassing if that's what you wanted to know? What exactly is it you want from the Wizard without having to multiclass into one? ^^
What I was thinking of was utilizing non-caster classes, subclasses, and feats to try to make a Barbarian as similar to a wizard as possible!
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Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
11. The weak swordsman clings to his instrument. It is better you have a sword, but death must lie under your fingernails, if need be. Learn death with your elbows, death with your knees, and death with your thumbs and fingertips. It is said death with the tongue is useful, but I find words too soft an instrument to smash a man’s skull.
Main stats can be switched around somewhat sometimes. Fire genasi and aberrant dragonmark get you a handful of con based spells allowing for con based attacks. You couldn't attack while raging but you could burn rages like they were bonus action spells with path of the storm herald or wild magic and gain a round of resistances in addition to the activation effects. Both use con based saving throws. You'd probably take dex as your secondary stat and get a pretty decent ac out of unarmored def in addition to a bunch of hp. Probably not a very strong build but maybe viable.
Not really the challenge you put forward, but I created a homebrew sub-class for a friend who wanted a Barbarian who could do "magic" (in this case shout really loud), called Path of the Caterwauler.
It's kind of like Barbarian crossed with Way of the Four Elements, which would probably be my answer otherwise; you probably wouldn't be taking many levels in Barbarian though since Monk is so dependent on having its Ki, so for 10 levels it's be Barbarian 3 (Totem Warrior for some free spells) and Monk 7 for a decent amount of Ki for a little bit of spell casting, you're also dependant upon abusing the fact that some elemental disciplines aren't described as spells so they can be used while Raging.
Then I'd maybe throw on Ritual Caster for more out of combat spells.
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If you want the absolute most wizard-like barbarian, do the following:
dump your STR (to be as strong as a wizard) and CON (to make your HP more like a wizard's), and put points into your mental stats.
give yourself a quarterstaff. Big weapons are for chumps.
take a magical subclass. The path of Wild Magic from Tasha's and the Path of the Storm Herald from Xanthanar's are pretty good.
choose a race with innate spells.
take feats that give you INT spells, unless you have one of the three DMs in the D&D community who don't use feats. Ritual Caster and Magic Initiate are good.
Obviously, this would be a pretty pathetic character, but nothing in the question said it had to be useful.
(And if you did want it do be useful, that's probably impossible).
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
In order to do this you want to focus on acquiring spells that have a "duration" but are not cast in combat. Some notables would be any thing on the ritual caster list. Unseen servant and find familiar would work for a lot of stuff. you will especially want tools to get a preparation turn for your 1 min duration spells.
an artificer Some of the infusions/ subclass features can stack well with a barbarian and give a nice magical feel. {just avoid the word "cast" for in combat spells features}
Artillerist has the nice eldritch blast cannon that isn't a spell. and creating cannons aren't casting spells. alchemist is also interesting because none of the " experimental potions" are Casting spells and alchemical savant is one of the weaker attack boons for artificer so barb mix helps. Armorer works if you are deliberately ignoring unarmored defense (this may be a way to make an OK battlerager)
the spell storing item is the best way to "cast a spell" without casting a spell.
Well, Wild Magic path seems the most obvious. You're not really going to "do magic" with it. You have features that are "like magic", but the effects are random and uncontrollable. Perhaps more than a wizard it reminds of a wild sorcerer.
Storm Herald path, meanwhile, has several "magic-tasting" features. It really seems to me the closest thing to a barbarian-wizard without multiclassing.
Ritual caster Wizard {or something similar}is kind of a must have you need identify and detect magic. but every other Wizard ritual also stands out and screams "wizard" to other players and npcs
Also, I use to combine illusion magic and unseen servant to do some wild tricks. Like have the servant catch a thrown coat at the same instance I Summoned an "illusory" coat rack or monster in its place. this would mimic Higher level wizard spells and freak out the untrained. Even trained casters would usually show some respect for the creativity.
This could be done with a simple arcane trickster MC+ unseen servant.
Here's a challenge for the good people of D&D Beyond: How can you make a Barbarian as much like a Wizard as possible (without multiclassing into wizard)? Have fun!
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
What I was thinking of was utilizing non-caster classes, subclasses, and feats to try to make a Barbarian as similar to a wizard as possible!
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
The storm herald subclass from XGtE is pretty magic heavy.
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(He/Him)
11. The weak swordsman clings to his instrument. It is better you have a sword, but death must lie under your fingernails, if need be. Learn death with your elbows, death with your knees, and death with your thumbs and fingertips. It is said death with the tongue is useful, but I find words too soft an instrument to smash a man’s skull.
I think a big one would be high INT, low STR.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Because it's FUNNY!
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
Main stats can be switched around somewhat sometimes. Fire genasi and aberrant dragonmark get you a handful of con based spells allowing for con based attacks. You couldn't attack while raging but you could burn rages like they were bonus action spells with path of the storm herald or wild magic and gain a round of resistances in addition to the activation effects. Both use con based saving throws. You'd probably take dex as your secondary stat and get a pretty decent ac out of unarmored def in addition to a bunch of hp. Probably not a very strong build but maybe viable.
Not really the challenge you put forward, but I created a homebrew sub-class for a friend who wanted a Barbarian who could do "magic" (in this case shout really loud), called Path of the Caterwauler.
It's kind of like Barbarian crossed with Way of the Four Elements, which would probably be my answer otherwise; you probably wouldn't be taking many levels in Barbarian though since Monk is so dependent on having its Ki, so for 10 levels it's be Barbarian 3 (Totem Warrior for some free spells) and Monk 7 for a decent amount of Ki for a little bit of spell casting, you're also dependant upon abusing the fact that some elemental disciplines aren't described as spells so they can be used while Raging.
Then I'd maybe throw on Ritual Caster for more out of combat spells.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
If you want the absolute most wizard-like barbarian, do the following:
Obviously, this would be a pretty pathetic character, but nothing in the question said it had to be useful.
(And if you did want it do be useful, that's probably impossible).
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
In order to do this you want to focus on acquiring spells that have a "duration" but are not cast in combat. Some notables would be any thing on the ritual caster list. Unseen servant and find familiar would work for a lot of stuff. you will especially want tools to get a preparation turn for your 1 min duration spells.
an artificer Some of the infusions/ subclass features can stack well with a barbarian and give a nice magical feel. {just avoid the word "cast" for in combat spells features}
Artillerist has the nice eldritch blast cannon that isn't a spell. and creating cannons aren't casting spells. alchemist is also interesting because none of the " experimental potions" are Casting spells and alchemical savant is one of the weaker attack boons for artificer so barb mix helps. Armorer works if you are deliberately ignoring unarmored defense (this may be a way to make an OK battlerager)
the spell storing item is the best way to "cast a spell" without casting a spell.
Also SSI uses an action to "produce the spell's effect" rather than casting it so rage compatible?
Well, Wild Magic path seems the most obvious. You're not really going to "do magic" with it. You have features that are "like magic", but the effects are random and uncontrollable. Perhaps more than a wizard it reminds of a wild sorcerer.
Storm Herald path, meanwhile, has several "magic-tasting" features. It really seems to me the closest thing to a barbarian-wizard without multiclassing.
The inverse of my wizard tank thread lol
I guess it’s fun to do things with a class the class shouldn’t do
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Assuming single class:
Bloodline of Mamnon Teifling:
3rd level: Wild Magic
4th level: Shadow Touched Feat with False Life
8th Level: Magic Initiate Feat with Friends, Prestigitation and Armor of Agathys
12th level: Artificer Initiate Feat with Guidance and Longstrider
16th level: Fey Touched feat with either Identify or Detect Magic
19th Level: Telepathic Feat
At 19th you have the following spells, most of which are either out of combat spells or have a long duration that can be cast long before combat:
Cantrips: Mage Hand, Guidance, Prestigitation, Friends
1st level spells: Tensers Floating Disk, Longstrider, Armor of Agathys, Identify/detect magic, False Life
2nd level spells: Arcane Lock, Detect Thoughts, Misty Step, Invisibility
plus all your wild magic abilities
Ritual caster Wizard {or something similar}is kind of a must have you need identify and detect magic. but every other Wizard ritual also stands out and screams "wizard" to other players and npcs
Also, I use to combine illusion magic and unseen servant to do some wild tricks. Like have the servant catch a thrown coat at the same instance I Summoned an "illusory" coat rack or monster in its place. this would mimic Higher level wizard spells and freak out the untrained. Even trained casters would usually show some respect for the creativity.
This could be done with a simple arcane trickster MC+ unseen servant.