I’m having trouble deciding which would be the better fighter/barbarian multiclass. A 18 Champion or Battlemaster Fighter / 2 Barbarian. Or a 17 Champion or Battlemaster / 3 Totem Warrior with the bear totem Barbarian.
(For context, I am a Mountain dwarf with a halbert and planning on taking the GWM and PAM feats)
For the 18 Champion Fighter / 2Barbarian. One could argue that the 2 levels of barbarian with the champion fighter subclass negates the blandest of the Champion subclass with greater percentages of success. By adding the advantage of the Reckless Attack to the increase of crit chances (Scoring a crit on 18, 19 or 20, while also giving you advantage) would increase the probability for a critical hits dramatically. If my math is right, with would increases the chances of a crit from 15% for a regular champion to 27.75% for the multiclass. And if you can add the lucky feat in there, it turns that 27.75% to around 38.58%.
On the other hand, if we look at the Battlemaster Fighter with Barbarian, instead of the increased chances of a crit, you gain the additional maneuvers that could help you in specific situations in combat which is equally useful.
Now adding 3rd level of barbarian to the mix does add additional protection, assuming you take the Totem Warrior Bear Totem you make yourself resistant to all damage expect Psychic while raging. However you would lose the changing the superiority dice from a d10 to a d12 for a Battlemaster. For the Champion, you’d lose the Survivor feature, which at at the start of each of your turns, you regain hit points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier if you have no more than half of your hit points left. And as the frontline fighter, you need all the hit points you can get.
So it all boils down to if that extra layer of protection is worth losing the 18th level abilities of the subclasses, and which fighter subclass blends better with the barbarian.
Personally I find the champion to be really boring. I would take battlemaster any day. Are you set on dwarf? A kalashtar or Gith gets resistance to psychic damage so a totem barb kalashtar would get resistance to everything.
I’m having trouble deciding which would be the better fighter/barbarian multiclass. A 18 Champion or Battlemaster Fighter / 2 Barbarian. Or a 17 Champion or Battlemaster / 3 Totem Warrior with the bear totem Barbarian.
Champion Fighter is garbage, so Battlemaster by default.
The benefits of Barbarian 3 will be a third rage per day and all of your rages provide resistance to 9 more damage types, plus untyped damage (which is very rare). The benefit of Fighter 18 will be your 6 superiority dice (+1 die per fight if you run out before you can rest) go from d10s to d12s, which is an average of +1 to the value (from 5.5 to 6.5), and Second Wind will restore +1 hp (18 instead of 17). I'd say Barbarian 3 is better, by a lot.
(For context, I am a Mountain dwarf with a halbert and planning on taking the GWM and PAM feats)
Mountain Dwarves make bad Barbarians (the armor proficiencies completely overlap and the ability to wear heavy armor with low strength is largely irrelevant) and bad Bearbarians (the poison resistance overlaps), but you do you. Remember, your Rage consumes your bonus action, so you can't also make a PAM strike turn 1. Not a big deal.
For the 18 Champion Fighter / 2Barbarian. One could argue that the 2 levels of barbarian with the champion fighter subclass negates the blandest of the Champion subclass with greater percentages of success. By adding the advantage of the Reckless Attack to the increase of crit chances (Scoring a crit on 18, 19 or 20, while also giving you advantage) would increase the probability for a critical hits dramatically. If my math is right, with would increases the chances of a crit from 15% for a regular champion to 27.75% for the multiclass. And if you can add the lucky feat in there, it turns that 27.75% to around 38.58%.
Your math is way off, yes. Crit chances are 5% base, 10% champion, 9.75% advantage, 19% champion with advantage. But if you want to crit-fish you're a lot better off qualifying for Elven Advantage, which precludes STR-based attacks. Crit odds are about 14.26% with triple advantage, 27.1% for a Champion or Hexblade with their curse up getting Triple Advantage. Then instead of Reckless Attack you come up with a different source of guaranteed advantage, like Shadow of Moil.
It's impossible for any Champion build to beat a Battle Master build until the BM runs out of dice, period. One of the reasons for this is that the BM dice damage also crits.
On the other hand, if we look at the Battlemaster Fighter with Barbarian, instead of the increased chances of a crit, you gain the additional maneuvers that could help you in specific situations in combat which is equally useful.
Specific? Provided you have Precision and Menacing, there's almost nothing specific to it. You just dump your dice directly into murder. If you're melee, your third maneuver is probably Tripping if you're not going to Reckless Attack. It's only after that we get into dice that might have a way to not come up, like Brace or Riposte.
Now adding 3rd level of barbarian to the mix does add additional protection, assuming you take the Totem Warrior Bear Totem you make yourself resistant to all damage expect Psychic while raging. However you would lose the changing the superiority dice from a d10 to a d12 for a Battlemaster. For the Champion, you’d lose the Survivor feature, which at at the start of each of your turns, you regain hit points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier if you have no more than half of your hit points left. And as the frontline fighter, you need all the hit points you can get.
So it all boils down to if that extra layer of protection is worth losing the 18th level abilities of the subclasses, and which fighter subclass blends better with the barbarian.
What do you all think?
I highly recommend you look at and consider both Ancestral Guardian Barbarian and Cavalier Fighter before committing to a Fighter/Barbarian build, depending on what you have in mind. If your DM will allow it, Echo Knight as well; Echo Knight X/Ancestral Guardian 3 is a particularly compelling tank.
You do make a fair point, however I do have to question the math. As a reminder, this is if you declare a Reckless attack AND have the lucky feat in this scenario.
The probability of getting at least one 18, 19 or 20 among the three dice is equal to 1 minus the probability of not getting any 18s, 19s or 20s among the three dice.
Since there is a 3 out of 20 chance to get a 18, 19 or a 20 on each die, we know that there is an 17 out of 20 chance to not get any of those values. 17/20 = .85, so there is a 85% chance you wouldn't get any 18s, 19s or 20s on any given die.
So to find out the odds of not getting a 18, 19 or a 20 on any of the three dice together, you mustmultiply the probabilities for each individual die together.
So, the probability of getting at least one 18, 19 or 20 among the three dice would be:
1 - (.85 X .85 X .85)
1 - .614125
.3858
Multiplying that probability by 100 gives us a 38.58% chance to crit on any given attack if you do a reckless attack AND take the lucky feat and use it.
Without the Lucky feat. That only gives 2 dice. So the math would be:
1 - (.85 X .85)
1 - .7225
.2775
Multiplying by 100 gives us 27.75
So without the Lucky feat, the probability would be 27.75%
When it comes to using Champion for Crit Fishing, it would have more value if you were mostly Barbarian, because you'll eventually get Brutal Criticals, which make your Critical Hits much more, uh... critical. Other than that... Champion kind of sucks. It's good in the sense that all Fighters are pretty good and Champion is a nice, straightforward that makes a Fighter inherently better at Fighting, but it has limited potential.
Battlemaster, meanwhile, is one of the most versatile and powerful Subclasses in the game, and I think it would pair well with a Bear Totem Barbarian. Here's another thing to consider... you're planning to battle with a Halberd, which deals 1d10+STR damage. If you go primarily Champion, your hope is to, more often than usual, deal 2d10+STR with your attack. However, as a Battlemaster, right at level 3 you can tack on a Maneuver to your attacks, which adds 1d8 to your damage... by the time you hit level 10 in the class, it raises to 1d10, which functionally allows you to trigger a Critical Hit at-will, in addition to whatever effects the Maneuver adds. In addition, the Maneuvers themselves still benefit from Critical Hits, so when you do manage to land a crit with your Reckless Attacks you can tack on a Maneuver and turn it into a truly massive output of damage. By the time you're level 13 total as a character with 3 levels of Barb and 10 of Fighter, you could be landing crits that deal 4d10+STR+2Rage(and possibly another +10 if using GWM). With just one more level in the class you can basically take 3 attacks, Action Surge for 3 more, then bonus action attack (whether through PAM or GWM) all at advantage thanks to reckless... that's 14 rolls in one round, and if any of them are Crits you can tack on a Superiority Die.
I’m having trouble deciding which would be the better fighter/barbarian multiclass. A 18 Champion or Battlemaster Fighter / 2 Barbarian. Or a 17 Champion or Battlemaster / 3 Totem Warrior with the bear totem Barbarian.
(For context, I am a Mountain dwarf with a halbert and planning on taking the GWM and PAM feats)
For the 18 Champion Fighter / 2 Barbarian. One could argue that the 2 levels of barbarian with the champion fighter subclass negates the blandest of the Champion subclass with greater percentages of success. By adding the advantage of the Reckless Attack to the increase of crit chances (Scoring a crit on 18, 19 or 20, while also giving you advantage) would increase the probability for a critical hits dramatically. If my math is right, with would increases the chances of a crit from 15% for a regular champion to 27.75% for the multiclass. And if you can add the lucky feat in there, it turns that 27.75% to around 38.58%.
On the other hand, if we look at the Battlemaster Fighter with Barbarian, instead of the increased chances of a crit, you gain the additional maneuvers that could help you in specific situations in combat which is equally useful.
Now adding 3rd level of barbarian to the mix does add additional protection, assuming you take the Totem Warrior Bear Totem you make yourself resistant to all damage expect Psychic while raging. However you would lose the changing the superiority dice from a d10 to a d12 for a Battlemaster. For the Champion, you’d lose the Survivor feature, which at at the start of each of your turns, you regain hit points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier if you have no more than half of your hit points left. And as the frontline fighter, you need all the hit points you can get.
So it all boils down to if that extra layer of protection is worth losing the 18th level abilities of the subclasses, and which fighter subclass blends better with the barbarian.
What do you all think?
Personally I find the champion to be really boring. I would take battlemaster any day. Are you set on dwarf? A kalashtar or Gith gets resistance to psychic damage so a totem barb kalashtar would get resistance to everything.
Yes, the campaign has started, so it’s too late to switch races at the moment. But that’s good to know for future campaigns.
Mountain Dwarves make bad Barbarians (the armor proficiencies completely overlap and the ability to wear heavy armor with low strength is largely irrelevant) and bad Bearbarians (the poison resistance overlaps), but you do you. Remember, your Rage consumes your bonus action, so you can't also make a PAM strike turn 1. Not a big deal.
Your math is way off, yes. Crit chances are 5% base, 10% champion, 9.75% advantage, 19% champion with advantage. But if you want to crit-fish you're a lot better off qualifying for Elven Advantage, which precludes STR-based attacks. Crit odds are about 14.26% with triple advantage, 27.1% for a Champion or Hexblade with their curse up getting Triple Advantage. Then instead of Reckless Attack you come up with a different source of guaranteed advantage, like Shadow of Moil.
It's impossible for any Champion build to beat a Battle Master build until the BM runs out of dice, period. One of the reasons for this is that the BM dice damage also crits.
Specific? Provided you have Precision and Menacing, there's almost nothing specific to it. You just dump your dice directly into murder. If you're melee, your third maneuver is probably Tripping if you're not going to Reckless Attack. It's only after that we get into dice that might have a way to not come up, like Brace or Riposte.
I highly recommend you look at and consider both Ancestral Guardian Barbarian and Cavalier Fighter before committing to a Fighter/Barbarian build, depending on what you have in mind. If your DM will allow it, Echo Knight as well; Echo Knight X/Ancestral Guardian 3 is a particularly compelling tank.
You do make a fair point, however I do have to question the math. As a reminder, this is if you declare a Reckless attack AND have the lucky feat in this scenario.
The probability of getting at least one 18, 19 or 20 among the three dice is equal to 1 minus the probability of not getting any 18s, 19s or 20s among the three dice.
Since there is a 3 out of 20 chance to get a 18, 19 or a 20 on each die, we know that there is an 17 out of 20 chance to not get any of those values. 17/20 = .85, so there is a 85% chance you wouldn't get any 18s, 19s or 20s on any given die.
So to find out the odds of not getting a 18, 19 or a 20 on any of the three dice together, you must multiply the probabilities for each individual die together.
So, the probability of getting at least one 18, 19 or 20 among the three dice would be:
1 - (.85 X .85 X .85)
1 - .614125
.3858
Multiplying that probability by 100 gives us a 38.58% chance to crit on any given attack if you do a reckless attack AND take the lucky feat and use it.
Without the Lucky feat. That only gives 2 dice. So the math would be:
1 - (.85 X .85)
1 - .7225
.2775
Multiplying by 100 gives us 27.75
So without the Lucky feat, the probability would be 27.75%
If you go the other direction and go Barbarian 17/Fighter 3 then the Champion isn’t a bad choice at all.
When it comes to using Champion for Crit Fishing, it would have more value if you were mostly Barbarian, because you'll eventually get Brutal Criticals, which make your Critical Hits much more, uh... critical. Other than that... Champion kind of sucks. It's good in the sense that all Fighters are pretty good and Champion is a nice, straightforward that makes a Fighter inherently better at Fighting, but it has limited potential.
Battlemaster, meanwhile, is one of the most versatile and powerful Subclasses in the game, and I think it would pair well with a Bear Totem Barbarian. Here's another thing to consider... you're planning to battle with a Halberd, which deals 1d10+STR damage. If you go primarily Champion, your hope is to, more often than usual, deal 2d10+STR with your attack. However, as a Battlemaster, right at level 3 you can tack on a Maneuver to your attacks, which adds 1d8 to your damage... by the time you hit level 10 in the class, it raises to 1d10, which functionally allows you to trigger a Critical Hit at-will, in addition to whatever effects the Maneuver adds. In addition, the Maneuvers themselves still benefit from Critical Hits, so when you do manage to land a crit with your Reckless Attacks you can tack on a Maneuver and turn it into a truly massive output of damage. By the time you're level 13 total as a character with 3 levels of Barb and 10 of Fighter, you could be landing crits that deal 4d10+STR+2Rage(and possibly another +10 if using GWM). With just one more level in the class you can basically take 3 attacks, Action Surge for 3 more, then bonus action attack (whether through PAM or GWM) all at advantage thanks to reckless... that's 14 rolls in one round, and if any of them are Crits you can tack on a Superiority Die.
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