Almost any caster will benefit from a 2-level dip in fighter to get action surge.
And if you do try ranger or barb, as ironsoul says, you have to remember that extra attacks don’t stack, so 3 or 4 levels can be good, but the fifth would be wasted.
I think a bladesinger/battlemaster is probably the most powerful fighter multiclass, but honestly if you turn this upside down and asked me about the most powerful badesinger multi class build I would not recommend a fighter and would probably suggest a Warlock, Cleric or Rogue.
That one aside, here are some fighter choices:
1. Rogue - With Tasha's rules I think a human or custom fighter with a Rogue dip is very powerful as a grappler build. Unarmed figthing style and Tavern Brawler with expertise in athletics. You can attack grapple and shove all in one action and then you have an immoblized prone enemy the you can sneak attack repeatedly with your Rapier while doing an extra 1d4 damage. He needs to take an action to TRY to beat your grapple and stand back up and he is going against your expertise. This works well with EK and battlemaster but my favorite is the Rune Knight because you can grapple huge enemies like dragons and get extra advantage on the roll. After you get to fighter 8 you probably want to take a few more levels in Rogue to get cunning action and a subclass. Scout is pretty awesome because you get to move as a reaction on the enemies turn who you have grappled. AT is a good option too.
2. Barbarian - Take a few levels of Barbarian for Reckless Attack and Rage, Fighter for AS a fighting style and awesome subclasses.
3. EK/Shadow Sorcerer - This takes a while to get going but at 12th level (6EK/6S) it gets awesome, you are a 8th level caster with extrattack, quicken spell, action surge and you have your hound running around.
4. EK/Aberrant Mind Sorcerer - This one comes online faster than #3 but is not as powerful in the end. This is probably a 3-level sorecer dip to pick up armor of agathys, and 3 caster levels to provide plenty of slots as well as more spells and cantrips for your EK. This is usually a low intelligence, high charisma build and you put the attack and damage spells on the sorcerer stuff.
5. Fighter/Dragon Monk - unarmed fighting style to boost monk martial artsdamage. Take 3 levels in fighter but then hold off on level 4 until Monk 12, then take level 4 and change your fighting style. Battlemaster, RK and EK all work well with this.
6. Strength-based heavy armor Fighter-Monk. Fighter then Monk 5 levels, then go to fighter 3 or 4, then the rest Monk levels. For this one you give up martial arts and unarmored movement because of the armor, but you keep everything else, including patient defense, step of the wind, deflect missiles and most important Stunning Strike. Screw Monk weapons and go GWM+Greatsword ..... with stunning strike! You can still use flurry of blows for 2 bonus action attacks as well, but you will need to take unarmed fighting style for decent damage since you don't have martial arts in armor. Tavern brawler is a nice half feat here too if you start with a 17 strength. You can use AS and FOB and deal 6 stunning strikes in a single turn!
7. Undead Warlock 2/Eldritch Knight. Ranged build, max charisma, dexterity 16, agonizing blast and improved pact weapon. Blast with EB then use your heavy crossbow with war magic. Make your enemy frightened so he can't advance on you.
My character would defiantly be mostly fighter. I'm thinking about going with rogue or bard. I'm thinking rogue because I'd like the build to make sense with the character, and i don't know where she'd learn how to do much of the other stuff. So far our party is made up of a two ranger, two rogues, a bard, and another fighter. She hasn't had much contact with anyone with any other skillset. (And i don't think she has the mental capacity to be a spellcaster. So i'm trying to keep magic to the minimum. LOL) Right now she is a level 6 Champion, she's actually the first fighter I've ever played.
I mostly made this thread out of curiosity, but i am seriously considering multi-classing with this character.
Be careful, multi classing when you don’t plan for it from the start can lead to bad characters; it doesn’t always, to be sure. But multi-classing poorly is really one of the few ways to make an ineffective character in this edition. That said, you are in a god place to dip out of champion. The big, next question is what are your ability scores?
Are you a dex-based fighter? Because you need a finesse or ranged weapon for sneak attack, so if you’re rolling around with a greatsword, there will be problems. How high is your cha? Bard features can work with a not-great cha, but your spells could be weak, though there are ways around that.
My character would defiantly be mostly fighter. I'm thinking about going with rogue or bard. I'm thinking rogue because I'd like the build to make sense with the character, and i don't know where she'd learn how to do much of the other stuff. So far our party is made up of a two ranger, two rogues, a bard, and another fighter. She hasn't had much contact with anyone with any other skillset. (And i don't think she has the mental capacity to be a spellcaster. So i'm trying to keep magic to the minimum. LOL) Right now she is a level 6 Champion, she's actually the first fighter I've ever played.
I mostly made this thread out of curiosity, but i am seriously considering multi-classing with this character.
Well if you already have her in play, what are her stats? We might have a few recommendations.
Be careful, multi classing when you don’t plan for it from the start can lead to bad characters; it doesn’t always, to be sure. But multi-classing poorly is really one of the few ways to make an ineffective character in this edition. That said, you are in a god place to dip out of champion. The big, next question is what are your ability scores?
Are you a dex-based fighter? Because you need a finesse or ranged weapon for sneak attack, so if you’re rolling around with a greatsword, there will be problems. How high is your cha? Bard features can work with a not-great cha, but your spells could be weak, though there are ways around that.
Yeah that was my biggest fear with this character which is why i may or may not actually go through with it. She is strength-based, so i was originally thinking barbarian, but due to the campaign setting, I'm not sure how she's learn those skills. Most of the reason i was thinking rogue was to gain cunning action. I'm just not sure that it's worth it. So I'm looking for other options. Currently, even with the other fighter, i am the party's tank. So, i'm mostly just trying to be as effective as i possibly can be in that department.
The most powerful, easily, has to be an elven samurai with EA and SS, multi class with gloom stalker for a 3lvl dip.
However, it does limit your power to be within the first round of combat. Luckily, this isn't bad since you will always pair your burst with fighting spirit and action surge. You may not be bursting the target you'd like to, but it does make for excellent action economy.
People need to get over this 'most powerful build' issue. There is no most powerful. A bugbear great weapon fighter with polearm master, sentinel and GWM is really powerful in melee but at 150 foot range.... Play a character, make sub-optimal choices, have fun. It's a game not a competition.
Like magi says, barbarian are your only options, and if you are str based, that leaves us with barbarian. You’d have to take your heavy armor off, and in exchange you’d get rage. With your dex and con scores, you’d go to a 17 ac (more if you have a shield or other magic items). So I’m going to guess your ac will go down, but then you start getting dr while raging.
To me the biggest advantage would be more of a meta-game bonus. You, the player, get some more tactical choices to make in combat, as far as when to rage, as opposed to the champion fighter where everything is pretty much a passive boost.
I was looking for alternatives to make two-weapon fighting more viable and I tested a simple build that consists basically of one single dip of Monk and the rest Fighter all the way. DEX 16, CON 16 and WIS 16, Unarmed fighting style and Battlemaster maneuvers.
You'll have above average AC in comparison against DEX-based Fighters and a basic extra bonus action attack. Resilient WIS is more than welcome and you have margin to invest in better feats like Alert or something.
I was looking for alternatives to make two-weapon fighting more viable and I tested a simple build that consists basically of one single dip of Monk and the rest Fighter all the way. DEX 16, CON 16 and WIS 16, Unarmed fighting style and Battlemaster maneuvers.
You'll have above average AC in comparison against DEX-based Fighters and a basic extra bonus action attack. Resilient WIS is more than welcome and you have margin to invest in better feats like Alert or something.
I'm actually curious about this build as it seems a little contradictory. Unarmed Fighting Style uses STR for unarmed strikes but you are going DEX. I mean sure the monk level lets you use DEX for unarmed strikes but that drops the damage to a d4.
Then you mentioned making two-weapon fighting more viable so that means you are using 2 short swords? I guess that lifts the damage back up to a d6 but using STR based unarmed strikes with 2 hands would result in higher d8 damage. Furthermore using STR to make unarmed strikes would still trigger the Monk's Martial Arts bonus attack which you can also make with STR for another d8 attack.
Wouldn't a STR based unarmed striker do more damage with the 1 level monk dip. Feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes in my assumptions.
I was looking for alternatives to make two-weapon fighting more viable and I tested a simple build that consists basically of one single dip of Monk and the rest Fighter all the way. DEX 16, CON 16 and WIS 16, Unarmed fighting style and Battlemaster maneuvers.
You'll have above average AC in comparison against DEX-based Fighters and a basic extra bonus action attack. Resilient WIS is more than welcome and you have margin to invest in better feats like Alert or something.
I'm actually curious about this build as it seems a little contradictory. Unarmed Fighting Style uses STR for unarmed strikes but you are going DEX. I mean sure the monk level lets you use DEX for unarmed strikes but that drops the damage to a d4.
Then you mentioned making two-weapon fighting more viable so that means you are using 2 short swords? I guess that lifts the damage back up to a d6 but using STR based unarmed strikes with 2 hands would result in higher d8 damage. Furthermore using STR to make unarmed strikes would still trigger the Monk's Martial Arts bonus attack which you can also make with STR for another d8 attack.
Wouldn't a STR based unarmed striker do more damage with the 1 level monk dip. Feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes in my assumptions.
Read Martial Arts again.
You can roll a d4 in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strike or monk weapon. This die changes as you gain monk levels, as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table.
Emphasis mine.
You just use the DEX part and then don't use the d4 part. That's not even a Unarmed Fighting style thing, all monks do this whenever they use a Quarterstaff or some other Monk weapon.
I'm not quite sure what they mean by dual-wielding, as the build presented only uses their fists? I mean it is a alternative to TWF. Using a quarterstaff, you get d8 damage, BA also a d8, without the need to commit to use both hands or grab the Dual-Wielder feat.
You can also go for Kensei monk after Fighter 3 or 11/12, to either Monk 2 (more weapon choice for from TCoE Dedicated Weapon, or d10), 3 (Kensai & Ki-Fueled Attack), 5 (Stunning Strike), or at most 7/8 (Evasion). Optimization-wise wouldn't go past 7/8. Lot of options, personally I'd just go with 2 monk 5 fighter 1 monk rest fighter cause I like swords, and reflavor the unarmed strikes as sword bashes or quick slashes.
Edit: Would mention this is definitely not the most powerful fighter multiclass, although it is a nice way make melee DEX Fighter a bit better. One dip is likely better optimization-wise but I really like the flavor you can get from 1-2 additional levels.
I'd avoid subclasses that use ki for non-base monk features, or scale based off of monk levels, so my best recommendations are Kensei and Open-hand. Personally I like Ascendant Dragon just for the flavor of elemental damage, but I admit that it doesn't actually do anything practically in most cases.
Oh thank you for the clarification, very helpful. I have not played much Monk so this is a very useful tidbit of info about not having to use the d4 part. Thanks again.
Sorry, bad grammar on my side. English is not my first language.
What I meant to say was that I was trying to look for alternatives to make TWF more effective. And I failed. TWF is underwhelming and nothing change that. But during this exercise and research, I realized that a Monk 1 / Fighter X with Unarmed fighting style would be superior to a regular TWF user. Better damage die, better AC, same bonus action extra attack and better synergies to invest in staple feats like Resilient (Wisdom). More room to invest in other better feats (Dual Wielder is horrible) and less reliance on magic items.
Eldritch knight. Elf, eladrin subrace. Gives access to a bonus action teleport that is basically, but isn’t a spell. This allows the Knight to teleport and preserve the action for spellcasting if necessary, but will likely still use attack action. The teleport regens on a short rest. Choose the fall variant for the ability to save Allie’s if necessary and to bypass Charisma based effects.
take fogcloud as a spell and blind fighting for advantage.
level 4 feat investment, telekinetic. This allows the fighter to potentially bonus action shove a creature into an ignoring spell effect. Is also a half feat to round up intelligence. Adds or improves magehand.
level 6, elven accuracy.
level 7, switch out w/e free floating level 1 spell your have for shadow blade.
dont multiclass, go to level 20.
this set up rivals and beats most great weapon fighter and sharpshooter builds in DPR with significantly less feat investment. The elven accuracy is amazing when combined with fog cloud or shadowblade and blindsight since you don’t suffer any accuracy loss. This means it’s much more reliable against creatures with high AC, which is where the damage needs to actually be done.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
What would you consider to be the most powerful multiclass build for a fighter?
Depends a lot. Ranger blends really well with Fighter for archery builds. Barbarian is also great for classic GWM PAM Fighters.
How much fighter?
Almost any caster will benefit from a 2-level dip in fighter to get action surge.
And if you do try ranger or barb, as ironsoul says, you have to remember that extra attacks don’t stack, so 3 or 4 levels can be good, but the fifth would be wasted.
I think a bladesinger/battlemaster is probably the most powerful fighter multiclass, but honestly if you turn this upside down and asked me about the most powerful badesinger multi class build I would not recommend a fighter and would probably suggest a Warlock, Cleric or Rogue.
That one aside, here are some fighter choices:
1. Rogue - With Tasha's rules I think a human or custom fighter with a Rogue dip is very powerful as a grappler build. Unarmed figthing style and Tavern Brawler with expertise in athletics. You can attack grapple and shove all in one action and then you have an immoblized prone enemy the you can sneak attack repeatedly with your Rapier while doing an extra 1d4 damage. He needs to take an action to TRY to beat your grapple and stand back up and he is going against your expertise. This works well with EK and battlemaster but my favorite is the Rune Knight because you can grapple huge enemies like dragons and get extra advantage on the roll. After you get to fighter 8 you probably want to take a few more levels in Rogue to get cunning action and a subclass. Scout is pretty awesome because you get to move as a reaction on the enemies turn who you have grappled. AT is a good option too.
2. Barbarian - Take a few levels of Barbarian for Reckless Attack and Rage, Fighter for AS a fighting style and awesome subclasses.
3. EK/Shadow Sorcerer - This takes a while to get going but at 12th level (6EK/6S) it gets awesome, you are a 8th level caster with extrattack, quicken spell, action surge and you have your hound running around.
4. EK/Aberrant Mind Sorcerer - This one comes online faster than #3 but is not as powerful in the end. This is probably a 3-level sorecer dip to pick up armor of agathys, and 3 caster levels to provide plenty of slots as well as more spells and cantrips for your EK. This is usually a low intelligence, high charisma build and you put the attack and damage spells on the sorcerer stuff.
5. Fighter/Dragon Monk - unarmed fighting style to boost monk martial artsdamage. Take 3 levels in fighter but then hold off on level 4 until Monk 12, then take level 4 and change your fighting style. Battlemaster, RK and EK all work well with this.
6. Strength-based heavy armor Fighter-Monk. Fighter then Monk 5 levels, then go to fighter 3 or 4, then the rest Monk levels. For this one you give up martial arts and unarmored movement because of the armor, but you keep everything else, including patient defense, step of the wind, deflect missiles and most important Stunning Strike. Screw Monk weapons and go GWM+Greatsword ..... with stunning strike! You can still use flurry of blows for 2 bonus action attacks as well, but you will need to take unarmed fighting style for decent damage since you don't have martial arts in armor. Tavern brawler is a nice half feat here too if you start with a 17 strength. You can use AS and FOB and deal 6 stunning strikes in a single turn!
7. Undead Warlock 2/Eldritch Knight. Ranged build, max charisma, dexterity 16, agonizing blast and improved pact weapon. Blast with EB then use your heavy crossbow with war magic. Make your enemy frightened so he can't advance on you.
Thanks for answering back!
My character would defiantly be mostly fighter. I'm thinking about going with rogue or bard. I'm thinking rogue because I'd like the build to make sense with the character, and i don't know where she'd learn how to do much of the other stuff. So far our party is made up of a two ranger, two rogues, a bard, and another fighter. She hasn't had much contact with anyone with any other skillset. (And i don't think she has the mental capacity to be a spellcaster. So i'm trying to keep magic to the minimum. LOL) Right now she is a level 6 Champion, she's actually the first fighter I've ever played.
I mostly made this thread out of curiosity, but i am seriously considering multi-classing with this character.
Be careful, multi classing when you don’t plan for it from the start can lead to bad characters; it doesn’t always, to be sure. But multi-classing poorly is really one of the few ways to make an ineffective character in this edition. That said, you are in a god place to dip out of champion. The big, next question is what are your ability scores?
Are you a dex-based fighter? Because you need a finesse or ranged weapon for sneak attack, so if you’re rolling around with a greatsword, there will be problems. How high is your cha? Bard features can work with a not-great cha, but your spells could be weak, though there are ways around that.
Well if you already have her in play, what are her stats? We might have a few recommendations.
Strength 20
Dexterity 18
Constitution 17
Intelligence 6
Wisdom 10
Charisma 9
Yeah that was my biggest fear with this character which is why i may or may not actually go through with it. She is strength-based, so i was originally thinking barbarian, but due to the campaign setting, I'm not sure how she's learn those skills. Most of the reason i was thinking rogue was to gain cunning action. I'm just not sure that it's worth it. So I'm looking for other options. Currently, even with the other fighter, i am the party's tank. So, i'm mostly just trying to be as effective as i possibly can be in that department.
The most powerful, easily, has to be an elven samurai with EA and SS, multi class with gloom stalker for a 3lvl dip.
However, it does limit your power to be within the first round of combat. Luckily, this isn't bad since you will always pair your burst with fighting spirit and action surge. You may not be bursting the target you'd like to, but it does make for excellent action economy.
People need to get over this 'most powerful build' issue. There is no most powerful. A bugbear great weapon fighter with polearm master, sentinel and GWM is really powerful in melee but at 150 foot range.... Play a character, make sub-optimal choices, have fun. It's a game not a competition.
With these current stats your only multiclass options are Barbarian and Rogue. A few levels of Barbarian works fairly well with a Champion.
Like magi says, barbarian are your only options, and if you are str based, that leaves us with barbarian.
You’d have to take your heavy armor off, and in exchange you’d get rage. With your dex and con scores, you’d go to a 17 ac (more if you have a shield or other magic items). So I’m going to guess your ac will go down, but then you start getting dr while raging.
To me the biggest advantage would be more of a meta-game bonus. You, the player, get some more tactical choices to make in combat, as far as when to rage, as opposed to the champion fighter where everything is pretty much a passive boost.
Thanks everyone! I'll defiantly consider these options.
I was looking for alternatives to make two-weapon fighting more viable and I tested a simple build that consists basically of one single dip of Monk and the rest Fighter all the way. DEX 16, CON 16 and WIS 16, Unarmed fighting style and Battlemaster maneuvers.
You'll have above average AC in comparison against DEX-based Fighters and a basic extra bonus action attack. Resilient WIS is more than welcome and you have margin to invest in better feats like Alert or something.
I'm actually curious about this build as it seems a little contradictory. Unarmed Fighting Style uses STR for unarmed strikes but you are going DEX. I mean sure the monk level lets you use DEX for unarmed strikes but that drops the damage to a d4.
Then you mentioned making two-weapon fighting more viable so that means you are using 2 short swords? I guess that lifts the damage back up to a d6 but using STR based unarmed strikes with 2 hands would result in higher d8 damage. Furthermore using STR to make unarmed strikes would still trigger the Monk's Martial Arts bonus attack which you can also make with STR for another d8 attack.
Wouldn't a STR based unarmed striker do more damage with the 1 level monk dip. Feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes in my assumptions.
Read Martial Arts again.
Emphasis mine.
You just use the DEX part and then don't use the d4 part. That's not even a Unarmed Fighting style thing, all monks do this whenever they use a Quarterstaff or some other Monk weapon.
I'm not quite sure what they mean by dual-wielding, as the build presented only uses their fists? I mean it is a alternative to TWF. Using a quarterstaff, you get d8 damage, BA also a d8, without the need to commit to use both hands or grab the Dual-Wielder feat.
You can also go for Kensei monk after Fighter 3 or 11/12, to either Monk 2 (more weapon choice for from TCoE Dedicated Weapon, or d10), 3 (Kensai & Ki-Fueled Attack), 5 (Stunning Strike), or at most 7/8 (Evasion). Optimization-wise wouldn't go past 7/8.
Lot of options, personally I'd just go with 2 monk 5 fighter 1 monk rest fighter cause I like swords, and reflavor the unarmed strikes as sword bashes or quick slashes.
Edit: Would mention this is definitely not the most powerful fighter multiclass, although it is a nice way make melee DEX Fighter a bit better. One dip is likely better optimization-wise but I really like the flavor you can get from 1-2 additional levels.
I'd avoid subclasses that use ki for non-base monk features, or scale based off of monk levels, so my best recommendations are Kensei and Open-hand. Personally I like Ascendant Dragon just for the flavor of elemental damage, but I admit that it doesn't actually do anything practically in most cases.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
Oh thank you for the clarification, very helpful. I have not played much Monk so this is a very useful tidbit of info about not having to use the d4 part. Thanks again.
Sorry, bad grammar on my side. English is not my first language.
What I meant to say was that I was trying to look for alternatives to make TWF more effective. And I failed. TWF is underwhelming and nothing change that. But during this exercise and research, I realized that a Monk 1 / Fighter X with Unarmed fighting style would be superior to a regular TWF user. Better damage die, better AC, same bonus action extra attack and better synergies to invest in staple feats like Resilient (Wisdom). More room to invest in other better feats (Dual Wielder is horrible) and less reliance on magic items.
Eldritch knight. Elf, eladrin subrace. Gives access to a bonus action teleport that is basically, but isn’t a spell. This allows the Knight to teleport and preserve the action for spellcasting if necessary, but will likely still use attack action. The teleport regens on a short rest. Choose the fall variant for the ability to save Allie’s if necessary and to bypass Charisma based effects.
take fogcloud as a spell and blind fighting for advantage.
level 4 feat investment, telekinetic. This allows the fighter to potentially bonus action shove a creature into an ignoring spell effect. Is also a half feat to round up intelligence. Adds or improves magehand.
level 6, elven accuracy.
level 7, switch out w/e free floating level 1 spell your have for shadow blade.
dont multiclass, go to level 20.
this set up rivals and beats most great weapon fighter and sharpshooter builds in DPR with significantly less feat investment. The elven accuracy is amazing when combined with fog cloud or shadowblade and blindsight since you don’t suffer any accuracy loss. This means it’s much more reliable against creatures with high AC, which is where the damage needs to actually be done.