I made a thread a while back which incidentally happened to be my most popular post on this site where I wanted to encourage discussion on the pros and cons of combining the Artificer with the Barbarian.
With my main arguments for the builds strengths being it’s ability to create magic items that make up for the weaknesses of its conflicting stat spread (such as making gauntlets of ogre power to raise strength from 13 to 19 without having to use up precious ASI’s), and the artificers subclass features that allow a character to pursue multiple goals such as tanking and dealing extra damage without being weighed down by the restrictions of rage, which for a casting class i believe is unique to artificers.
however, I have little experience with optimization and even less experience with the actual game. And as a result my original thread was flawed, giving me a series of mixed to poor responses which made me reconsider my approach by asking for help from experienced players and optimizers instead of throwing myself into this confusing maze of a build.
one approach I’ve seen to start is the goal of a tank, where we begin by starting as a small-sized custom lineage character so we can choose a feat (which feat is best for this build I haven’t figured out yet but I’ve thought about war caster and fey touched for compelled duel) and get our desired stat bonuses to INT and CON. The small size will be vital for later because we immediately go into battlesmith so we can ride our steel defender. From this point onward it gets foggy until level 10 where we can bump our strength up to 19 with GOOP (or by leveling it up normally if you want to free up an attunement slot) and going into ancestral guardian for seven or so levels, maybe an even 10/10 split is good but I see great value in our capstone being a three level dip into fighter to pick up the cavalier’s main features.
This is as far as I’ve gotten in terms of optimizing this build because honestly it hurts my brain and I don’t really have anyone to discuss and workshop with. So I’m asking for help!
A suggestion - try your build ideas in the character builder here and compare 2-3 versions to see what seems to work best. Barbarian/ artificer is definitely an unusual combo so it could prove interesting.
Some combos just struggle to make par even with heavy optimization, and I just want to war that you're very likely not going to be better than a straight artificer or barbarian at any point. The two things you list as strengths are just (partial) compensations for some of the many problems you're creating for yourself. Until level 10 you're playing a build that needs STR, DEX, CON, and INT all to be as high as possible, and both sides of the MC are going to be hurting from the delayed feature progression.
If your goal is to be a tank, either of these classes is a better tank than a combination of them. If your goal is to be an artificer/barbarian, I think you're on the right track to be as good as you can be, but stat allocation at low levels is going to be rough. Dumping STR (which includes losing Reckless Strikes and Rage damage bonuses) until level 10 sounds like a pretty rough play experience, and a lot of games never even get there.
Here is a build I put together based around cheesing Boots of the Winding Path and the Ancestral Protectors ability.
You go Armorer to get Intelligence to your weapon attacks (I know, it means you don't get Rage bonus damage)
Considering the goals of this build isn’t to hit very hard (and that the bonus damage to rage isn’t very impressive to begin with) the lack of rage damage is fine. I love the idea of buffing up a suit of rage-appropriate armor with infusions and the armorer’s features. Obviously guardian would be best for this but I can even see going an infiltrator to get a very good ranged attack (with storm herald, maybe? For more lightning).
Some combos just struggle to make par even with heavy optimization, and I just want to war that you're very likely not going to be better than a straight artificer or barbarian at any point. The two things you list as strengths are just (partial) compensations for some of the many problems you're creating for yourself. Until level 10 you're playing a build that needs STR, DEX, CON, and INT all to be as high as possible, and both sides of the MC are going to be hurting from the delayed feature progression.
If your goal is to be a tank, either of these classes is a better tank than a combination of them. If your goal is to be an artificer/barbarian, I think you're on the right track to be as good as you can be, but stat allocation at low levels is going to be rough. Dumping STR (which includes losing Reckless Strikes and Rage damage bonuses) until level 10 sounds like a pretty rough play experience, and a lot of games never even get there.
Thank you for the warning. I’be already accepted that this build isn’t going to be very good but I’m choosing to polish it to its maximum regardless because I see great things in it. While the issues of stat allocation are shared by a lot of other multiclassing combinations. I can see a few ways to work around this like using an infused weapon with the battle smith’s feature that allows int to be used for melee attacks, though that reduces our damage heavily from rage and reckless attack. Gauntlets of ogre power is something I’ve been thinking of a lot as a key feature for this build since it bumps us up from 13 to 19 right as we’re about to multiclass, at the sacrifice of permanently losing an attunement slot as we can’t really take them off.
The good news is you can change the armor type after any rest.
The idea behind that build is that you provide tanking via damage mitigation with your Ancestral Protectors feature. Your bugbear +5 foot reach on your turn and the boots give you good options for repositioning away from enemies after you hit them.
Flash of Genius and Spirit Shield also provide great mitigation.
For spells, I picked up a bunch of rituals like identify and alarm which are always useful. grease and mirror image do not require concentration but have effects beyond 1 round, so they are good to case before entering rage and still get a benefit. Other good options to potentially pick up are alter self and lesser restoration are those offer good out of combat utility. I would probably drop faerie fire for whichever one you like more.
I would definitely try to get to level 10 artificer for the gauntlets of ogre power infusion. As that means you can actually use your Reckless Attack feature.
1. Barbarians are heavily frontloaded and gain very little after 5. You could go barbarian 4-6 and then artificer 14-16 and build and play almost entirely like a full barbarian. You should have a little less damage, but tons of support and out of combat utility.
2. Totem barbs level 3 bear feature isn't restricted by heavy armor like normal resistance. You could go an armorer artificer, wear heavy armor, and still have resistance to all damage except psychic. This could allow you to have lower dex or con if you wanted to since you no longer need them for ac.
What is the purpose of this multiclass? What is the goal of this character? I've seen remarks that the goal is to produce a superior tank, ostensibly by combining barbaric damage resistance with the Guardian Armorer's ability to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks against everyone but the Guardian. As well, remarks that the artificer covers its own MADness through the use of Infusions to augment its stats.
The problem with this, and why you're having such trouble with the idea, is that artificer and barbarian have absolutely no synergy. Neither class does anything that makes the other class better, and in fact the barbarian makes almost everything artificer does worse. The artificer can create magic items that help it overcome some (but not all) of its weaknesses, yes. A DM can also simply award those items, or allow players to find them. When the most important part of your tenth-level artificer side's kit is "can make Gauntlets of Ogre Strength so I have 19 ST", you have an issue. The only thing you seem to be gaining from barbarian levels is two uses a day of resistance to mundane weapon damage, since you're actively looking at discarding Rage's benefits to damage and attack values by utilizing Intelligence rather than Strength.
A barbarian can impose disadvantage on an enemy's attacks all by itself via the Ancestral Guardian subclass, which is a criminally underrated barbarian subclass that is rich with flavor potential as well as a very good forward defender. Remember: an iron-plated ball of tough-to-kill gristle that cannot meaningfully threaten its enemies is not a "tank", it's a rock. Tanks have gigantic cannons they can use to pulverize their enemies. Rocks, your enemies will simply bypass on their way to striking down the less durable, more dangerous midline and backline guys actually causing the problem. Attacking the 12 AC wizard at disadvantage is still a better use of most any enemy's time than attacking the highly resistant lump of armored meat that isn't actually threatening them in any meaningful way.
A 'tank' has to be able to do two things - draw attention and hold attention. In video games they do these things through a convoluted, awful, deeply unfun and unhelpful "threat" system that has been gamed to hell and back for decades. In a tabletop game, however? You draw and hold attention not by "generating Threat", but by actually being threatening. By telling your enemies "if you ignore me to punch on my buddies, I'm going to kill you for it." Ideally you don't even want significant AC - you want to be easy to hit but hard to kill, so enemies are further incentivized to wail on you.
This multiclass doesn't serve any of these goals. You don't have any realistic way of being threatening since your weapon attacks are very weak, and your durability is based primarily in being hard to hit whilst using barbaric rage ro patch your soggy d8 hit die from artificer. If you don't have a specific goal for this beyond "I want to push it to its limits" or "I want to be tough and also not rely on the DM for magic swag", there's not much we can really do to help.
Ok, when building a crazy multi stat multiclass if you are going pointbuy or standard array it’s clearly going to be a weak sister. Personally I only use a good set of rolled stats (nothing under 10 and at least 3 13+s), and yes I keep rolling til I get something that works. here is an example: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/wcwilson82355_77384947.pdf
a bugbear storm herald 10/battlsmith 10 - AC 23, 205HPs, etc a decent tank with a battle axe, reach and multiple attacks. No homonculus tho.
What is the purpose of this multiclass? What is the goal of this character? I've seen remarks that the goal is to produce a superior tank, ostensibly by combining barbaric damage resistance with the Guardian Armorer's ability to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks against everyone but the Guardian. As well, remarks that the artificer covers its own MADness through the use of Infusions to augment its stats.
The problem with this, and why you're having such trouble with the idea, is that artificer and barbarian have absolutely no synergy. Neither class does anything that makes the other class better, and in fact the barbarian makes almost everything artificer does worse. The artificer can create magic items that help it overcome some (but not all) of its weaknesses, yes. A DM can also simply award those items, or allow players to find them. When the most important part of your tenth-level artificer side's kit is "can make Gauntlets of Ogre Strength so I have 19 ST", you have an issue. The only thing you seem to be gaining from barbarian levels is two uses a day of resistance to mundane weapon damage, since you're actively looking at discarding Rage's benefits to damage and attack values by utilizing Intelligence rather than Strength.
A barbarian can impose disadvantage on an enemy's attacks all by itself via the Ancestral Guardian subclass, which is a criminally underrated barbarian subclass that is rich with flavor potential as well as a very good forward defender. Remember: an iron-plated ball of tough-to-kill gristle that cannot meaningfully threaten its enemies is not a "tank", it's a rock. Tanks have gigantic cannons they can use to pulverize their enemies. Rocks, your enemies will simply bypass on their way to striking down the less durable, more dangerous midline and backline guys actually causing the problem. Attacking the 12 AC wizard at disadvantage is still a better use of most any enemy's time than attacking the highly resistant lump of armored meat that isn't actually threatening them in any meaningful way.
A 'tank' has to be able to do two things - draw attention and hold attention. In video games they do these things through a convoluted, awful, deeply unfun and unhelpful "threat" system that has been gamed to hell and back for decades. In a tabletop game, however? You draw and hold attention not by "generating Threat", but by actually being threatening. By telling your enemies "if you ignore me to punch on my buddies, I'm going to kill you for it." Ideally you don't even want significant AC - you want to be easy to hit but hard to kill, so enemies are further incentivized to wail on you.
This multiclass doesn't serve any of these goals. You don't have any realistic way of being threatening since your weapon attacks are very weak, and your durability is based primarily in being hard to hit whilst using barbaric rage ro patch your soggy d8 hit die from artificer. If you don't have a specific goal for this beyond "I want to push it to its limits" or "I want to be tough and also not rely on the DM for magic swag", there's not much we can really do to help.
As despairing as this was to read, I do think I should change focus on this builds goal. As you said, a rock isn’t very useful if it can’t draw in attacks from enemies. In my original build with the small-sized battlesmith/ancestral guardian I thought a final dip into cavalier would remedy this but I feel that’s a pretty weak fix. Maybe there are other goals to look towards with this combination, I’m just not sure what they are yet. Artificers are too versatile and barbarians are too straightforward.
The good news is you can change the armor type after any rest.
The idea behind that build is that you provide tanking via damage mitigation with your Ancestral Protectors feature. Your bugbear +5 foot reach on your turn and the boots give you good options for repositioning away from enemies after you hit them.
Flash of Genius and Spirit Shield also provide great mitigation.
For spells, I picked up a bunch of rituals like identify and alarm which are always useful. grease and mirror image do not require concentration but have effects beyond 1 round, so they are good to case before entering rage and still get a benefit. Other good options to potentially pick up are alter self and lesser restoration are those offer good out of combat utility. I would probably drop faerie fire for whichever one you like more.
I would definitely try to get to level 10 artificer for the gauntlets of ogre power infusion. As that means you can actually use your Reckless Attack feature.
I never thought about using the boots as a hit and run method, but combined with the damage mitigation and range with this build (with a reach weapon, it would be even more devious) would make a really good build for pestering enemies without worrying about retaliation most of the time. I can totally see magic missile added on just to annoy enemies more, but the damage is definitely going to be lacking. Not much of an issue when the strategy is to poke them and blink away though.
The problem with hit and run is that you aren’t there to protect back liners, further, you have to be doing decent damage to keep foes focused on you and not ignoring you. Using a bugbear and focusing on high initiative solves much of that. Going first allows you to add 2d6 damage to any hit, you get reach without a reach weapon so you more or less control 2 squares around you instead of 1 and with Dex and Con boosted and a shield with your infusion your AC is pretty solid while not being obviously tanked up. In addition the D12 +D8 every 2 levels averages to D10 HP/level so you can take the blows that hit.
2. Totem barbs level 3 bear feature isn't restricted by heavy armor like normal resistance. You could go an armorer artificer, wear heavy armor, and still have resistance to all damage except psychic. This could allow you to have lower dex or con if you wanted to since you no longer need them for ac.
Umm, they only get their resistance while raging, and rage explicitly prohibits wearing heavy armour, so yes it is. You could not wear heavy armour and still have your resistance.
Moreover regular resistance is completely unaffected by wearing heavy armour. A Dwarven fighter doesn’t suddenly lose their poison resistance when they put on a set of plate. So you are completely incorrect on all counts. At the very least read and understand the rules before trying to give advice.
You have not read the rules carefully enough Beardsinger.
Nothing about heavy armor prevents barbarians from raging. What happens is that they lose access to several rage features:
Rage
In battle, you fight with primal ferocity. On your turn, you can enter a rage as a bonus action.
While raging, you gain the following benefits if you aren’t wearing heavy armor:
You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a bonus to the damage roll that increases as you gain levels as a barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian table.
You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
If you are able to cast spells, you can’t cast them or concentrate on them while raging.
Your rage lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. You can also end your rage on your turn as a bonus action.
Once you have raged the number of times shown for your barbarian level in the Rages column of the Barbarian table, you must finish a long rest before you can rage again.
So yes, barbarians lose the normal resistance they have to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage if they are wearing heavy armor while raging, but the level 3 Bear Totem Barbarian feature is not restricted by wearing heavy armor:
Bear
While raging, you have resistance to all damage except psychic damage. The spirit of the bear makes you tough enough to stand up to any punishment.
So a level 3 bear totem barbarian can wear heavy armor and have resistance to all damage except psychic while raging.
Some combos just struggle to make par even with heavy optimization, and I just want to war that you're very likely not going to be better than a straight artificer or barbarian at any point. The two things you list as strengths are just (partial) compensations for some of the many problems you're creating for yourself. Until level 10 you're playing a build that needs STR, DEX, CON, and INT all to be as high as possible, and both sides of the MC are going to be hurting from the delayed feature progression.
If your goal is to be a tank, either of these classes is a better tank than a combination of them. If your goal is to be an artificer/barbarian, I think you're on the right track to be as good as you can be, but stat allocation at low levels is going to be rough. Dumping STR (which includes losing Reckless Strikes and Rage damage bonuses) until level 10 sounds like a pretty rough play experience, and a lot of games never even get there.
It's worse than that, actually. Because infusing Gauntlets of Ogre Power requires you to be a 10th level artificer, so you'll need barbarian levels on top of that unless you want to wait until 11th level to multiclass.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, you don’t. The bear totem resistance is an extension of the class feature and so if you lose one then you lose them both. Trying to be clever and pedantic by arguing that they are separate things would just get you thrown out of my game. Your argument doesn’t even begin to address your statement that regular resistance is removed when wearing heavy armour.
No, you don’t. The bear totem resistance is an extension of the class feature and so if you lose one then you lose them both.
That isn't what the rules says. The rules say while raging you have resistance to all damage except psychic, and don't specify that you lose this feature while wearing heavy armor so therefore you don't. You can have whatever house rule you want, but according to the official rules this does work.
I never said regular resistance is removed while wearing heavy armor. You imagined I said that all on your own.
To the OP: I think you need to take a step back and think about what you're actually after.
It's clear that something about Artificer/Barbarian seems cool to you. What is that? Try to describe it without reference to specific game mechanics. There might be a way to get what you want... but it's probably not going to wind up being an artificer/barbarian.
The normal barbarian resistance for rage. The whole context of this discussion was the the op making a multiclass barbarian / artificer.
It seems like you're more interested in winning an imaginary argument with me than helping the op, and also that you do not have a very good understanding of the official rules. I'm done relying to and correcting you.
But you didn’t specify in your post that you only meant the initial barbarian resistance did you. You just said that resistance was negated by wearing heavy armour. You cannot hold a logical argument where you say ‘x is true because the rules don’t specifically say y’ and then go on to suggest you are correcting me after I call you out on a non specific comment that you made. That’s called hypocrisy. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t say a non specific rule proves your specific point and then make a non specific statement and claim it does not prove a specific point. So no kid, you didn’t correct my mistakes in the slightest. And just as importantly we are still on the subject of the op’s original post. We have given advice on the first post he made on it the other day and we have given advice on this post and we have also called out people like yourself giving out incorrect advice. He will lose his resistances if wearing heavy armour. That is the rules. You can ignore them in your game if you like, you sulk and claim you know better as much as you want. It doesn’t change anything.
I made a thread a while back which incidentally happened to be my most popular post on this site where I wanted to encourage discussion on the pros and cons of combining the Artificer with the Barbarian.
With my main arguments for the builds strengths being it’s ability to create magic items that make up for the weaknesses of its conflicting stat spread (such as making gauntlets of ogre power to raise strength from 13 to 19 without having to use up precious ASI’s), and the artificers subclass features that allow a character to pursue multiple goals such as tanking and dealing extra damage without being weighed down by the restrictions of rage, which for a casting class i believe is unique to artificers.
however, I have little experience with optimization and even less experience with the actual game. And as a result my original thread was flawed, giving me a series of mixed to poor responses which made me reconsider my approach by asking for help from experienced players and optimizers instead of throwing myself into this confusing maze of a build.
one approach I’ve seen to start is the goal of a tank, where we begin by starting as a small-sized custom lineage character so we can choose a feat (which feat is best for this build I haven’t figured out yet but I’ve thought about war caster and fey touched for compelled duel) and get our desired stat bonuses to INT and CON. The small size will be vital for later because we immediately go into battlesmith so we can ride our steel defender.
From this point onward it gets foggy until level 10 where we can bump our strength up to 19 with GOOP (or by leveling it up normally if you want to free up an attunement slot) and going into ancestral guardian for seven or so levels, maybe an even 10/10 split is good but I see great value in our capstone being a three level dip into fighter to pick up the cavalier’s main features.
This is as far as I’ve gotten in terms of optimizing this build because honestly it hurts my brain and I don’t really have anyone to discuss and workshop with. So I’m asking for help!
A suggestion - try your build ideas in the character builder here and compare 2-3 versions to see what seems to work best. Barbarian/ artificer is definitely an unusual combo so it could prove interesting.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
https://ddb.ac/characters/77313160/07aled
Here is a build I put together based around cheesing Boots of the Winding Path and the Ancestral Protectors ability.
You go Armorer to get Intelligence to your weapon attacks (I know, it means you don't get Rage bonus damage)
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Some combos just struggle to make par even with heavy optimization, and I just want to war that you're very likely not going to be better than a straight artificer or barbarian at any point. The two things you list as strengths are just (partial) compensations for some of the many problems you're creating for yourself. Until level 10 you're playing a build that needs STR, DEX, CON, and INT all to be as high as possible, and both sides of the MC are going to be hurting from the delayed feature progression.
If your goal is to be a tank, either of these classes is a better tank than a combination of them. If your goal is to be an artificer/barbarian, I think you're on the right track to be as good as you can be, but stat allocation at low levels is going to be rough. Dumping STR (which includes losing Reckless Strikes and Rage damage bonuses) until level 10 sounds like a pretty rough play experience, and a lot of games never even get there.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Considering the goals of this build isn’t to hit very hard (and that the bonus damage to rage isn’t very impressive to begin with) the lack of rage damage is fine. I love the idea of buffing up a suit of rage-appropriate armor with infusions and the armorer’s features. Obviously guardian would be best for this but I can even see going an infiltrator to get a very good ranged attack (with storm herald, maybe? For more lightning).
Thank you for the warning. I’be already accepted that this build isn’t going to be very good but I’m choosing to polish it to its maximum regardless because I see great things in it. While the issues of stat allocation are shared by a lot of other multiclassing combinations. I can see a few ways to work around this like using an infused weapon with the battle smith’s feature that allows int to be used for melee attacks, though that reduces our damage heavily from rage and reckless attack. Gauntlets of ogre power is something I’ve been thinking of a lot as a key feature for this build since it bumps us up from 13 to 19 right as we’re about to multiclass, at the sacrifice of permanently losing an attunement slot as we can’t really take them off.
The good news is you can change the armor type after any rest.
The idea behind that build is that you provide tanking via damage mitigation with your Ancestral Protectors feature. Your bugbear +5 foot reach on your turn and the boots give you good options for repositioning away from enemies after you hit them.
Flash of Genius and Spirit Shield also provide great mitigation.
For spells, I picked up a bunch of rituals like identify and alarm which are always useful. grease and mirror image do not require concentration but have effects beyond 1 round, so they are good to case before entering rage and still get a benefit. Other good options to potentially pick up are alter self and lesser restoration are those offer good out of combat utility. I would probably drop faerie fire for whichever one you like more.
I would definitely try to get to level 10 artificer for the gauntlets of ogre power infusion. As that means you can actually use your Reckless Attack feature.
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Some general thoughts:
1. Barbarians are heavily frontloaded and gain very little after 5. You could go barbarian 4-6 and then artificer 14-16 and build and play almost entirely like a full barbarian. You should have a little less damage, but tons of support and out of combat utility.
2. Totem barbs level 3 bear feature isn't restricted by heavy armor like normal resistance. You could go an armorer artificer, wear heavy armor, and still have resistance to all damage except psychic. This could allow you to have lower dex or con if you wanted to since you no longer need them for ac.
What is the purpose of this multiclass? What is the goal of this character? I've seen remarks that the goal is to produce a superior tank, ostensibly by combining barbaric damage resistance with the Guardian Armorer's ability to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks against everyone but the Guardian. As well, remarks that the artificer covers its own MADness through the use of Infusions to augment its stats.
The problem with this, and why you're having such trouble with the idea, is that artificer and barbarian have absolutely no synergy. Neither class does anything that makes the other class better, and in fact the barbarian makes almost everything artificer does worse. The artificer can create magic items that help it overcome some (but not all) of its weaknesses, yes. A DM can also simply award those items, or allow players to find them. When the most important part of your tenth-level artificer side's kit is "can make Gauntlets of Ogre Strength so I have 19 ST", you have an issue. The only thing you seem to be gaining from barbarian levels is two uses a day of resistance to mundane weapon damage, since you're actively looking at discarding Rage's benefits to damage and attack values by utilizing Intelligence rather than Strength.
A barbarian can impose disadvantage on an enemy's attacks all by itself via the Ancestral Guardian subclass, which is a criminally underrated barbarian subclass that is rich with flavor potential as well as a very good forward defender. Remember: an iron-plated ball of tough-to-kill gristle that cannot meaningfully threaten its enemies is not a "tank", it's a rock. Tanks have gigantic cannons they can use to pulverize their enemies. Rocks, your enemies will simply bypass on their way to striking down the less durable, more dangerous midline and backline guys actually causing the problem. Attacking the 12 AC wizard at disadvantage is still a better use of most any enemy's time than attacking the highly resistant lump of armored meat that isn't actually threatening them in any meaningful way.
A 'tank' has to be able to do two things - draw attention and hold attention. In video games they do these things through a convoluted, awful, deeply unfun and unhelpful "threat" system that has been gamed to hell and back for decades. In a tabletop game, however? You draw and hold attention not by "generating Threat", but by actually being threatening. By telling your enemies "if you ignore me to punch on my buddies, I'm going to kill you for it." Ideally you don't even want significant AC - you want to be easy to hit but hard to kill, so enemies are further incentivized to wail on you.
This multiclass doesn't serve any of these goals. You don't have any realistic way of being threatening since your weapon attacks are very weak, and your durability is based primarily in being hard to hit whilst using barbaric rage ro patch your soggy d8 hit die from artificer. If you don't have a specific goal for this beyond "I want to push it to its limits" or "I want to be tough and also not rely on the DM for magic swag", there's not much we can really do to help.
Please do not contact or message me.
Ok, when building a crazy multi stat multiclass if you are going pointbuy or standard array it’s clearly going to be a weak sister. Personally I only use a good set of rolled stats (nothing under 10 and at least 3 13+s), and yes I keep rolling til I get something that works.
here is an example: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sheet-pdfs/wcwilson82355_77384947.pdf
a bugbear storm herald 10/battlsmith 10 - AC 23, 205HPs, etc a decent tank with a battle axe, reach and multiple attacks. No homonculus tho.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
As despairing as this was to read, I do think I should change focus on this builds goal. As you said, a rock isn’t very useful if it can’t draw in attacks from enemies. In my original build with the small-sized battlesmith/ancestral guardian I thought a final dip into cavalier would remedy this but I feel that’s a pretty weak fix. Maybe there are other goals to look towards with this combination, I’m just not sure what they are yet. Artificers are too versatile and barbarians are too straightforward.
I never thought about using the boots as a hit and run method, but combined with the damage mitigation and range with this build (with a reach weapon, it would be even more devious) would make a really good build for pestering enemies without worrying about retaliation most of the time. I can totally see magic missile added on just to annoy enemies more, but the damage is definitely going to be lacking. Not much of an issue when the strategy is to poke them and blink away though.
The problem with hit and run is that you aren’t there to protect back liners, further, you have to be doing decent damage to keep foes focused on you and not ignoring you. Using a bugbear and focusing on high initiative solves much of that. Going first allows you to add 2d6 damage to any hit, you get reach without a reach weapon so you more or less control 2 squares around you instead of 1 and with Dex and Con boosted and a shield with your infusion your AC is pretty solid while not being obviously tanked up. In addition the D12 +D8 every 2 levels averages to D10 HP/level so you can take the blows that hit.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Umm, they only get their resistance while raging, and rage explicitly prohibits wearing heavy armour, so yes it is. You could not wear heavy armour and still have your resistance.
Moreover regular resistance is completely unaffected by wearing heavy armour. A Dwarven fighter doesn’t suddenly lose their poison resistance when they put on a set of plate. So you are completely incorrect on all counts. At the very least read and understand the rules before trying to give advice.
You have not read the rules carefully enough Beardsinger.
Nothing about heavy armor prevents barbarians from raging. What happens is that they lose access to several rage features:
So yes, barbarians lose the normal resistance they have to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage if they are wearing heavy armor while raging, but the level 3 Bear Totem Barbarian feature is not restricted by wearing heavy armor:
So a level 3 bear totem barbarian can wear heavy armor and have resistance to all damage except psychic while raging.
It's worse than that, actually. Because infusing Gauntlets of Ogre Power requires you to be a 10th level artificer, so you'll need barbarian levels on top of that unless you want to wait until 11th level to multiclass.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No, you don’t. The bear totem resistance is an extension of the class feature and so if you lose one then you lose them both. Trying to be clever and pedantic by arguing that they are separate things would just get you thrown out of my game. Your argument doesn’t even begin to address your statement that regular resistance is removed when wearing heavy armour.
That isn't what the rules says. The rules say while raging you have resistance to all damage except psychic, and don't specify that you lose this feature while wearing heavy armor so therefore you don't. You can have whatever house rule you want, but according to the official rules this does work.
I never said regular resistance is removed while wearing heavy armor. You imagined I said that all on your own.
To the OP: I think you need to take a step back and think about what you're actually after.
It's clear that something about Artificer/Barbarian seems cool to you. What is that? Try to describe it without reference to specific game mechanics. There might be a way to get what you want... but it's probably not going to wind up being an artificer/barbarian.
But you didn’t specify in your post that you only meant the initial barbarian resistance did you. You just said that resistance was negated by wearing heavy armour. You cannot hold a logical argument where you say ‘x is true because the rules don’t specifically say y’ and then go on to suggest you are correcting me after I call you out on a non specific comment that you made. That’s called hypocrisy. You can’t have it both ways, you can’t say a non specific rule proves your specific point and then make a non specific statement and claim it does not prove a specific point. So no kid, you didn’t correct my mistakes in the slightest. And just as importantly we are still on the subject of the op’s original post. We have given advice on the first post he made on it the other day and we have given advice on this post and we have also called out people like yourself giving out incorrect advice. He will lose his resistances if wearing heavy armour. That is the rules. You can ignore them in your game if you like, you sulk and claim you know better as much as you want. It doesn’t change anything.