Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hi! Starting new campaign I wanted to play little girlie with anger issues and no sense for authority, i read some threads on reddit that Barbarian Artificer multiclass is a good combo but i want to ask some advanced players how would you level these two classes? My race is gnome and in backstory her parents are artificers so i already have some background and tinkerers minds, but I'm starting as Barbarian. My thoughts on the actual play is that Annie (my little rage ball) will fall in love with bombs and will try to make one of her own because its the perfect combination of her tinkerers mind and huge power of rage. So my question is, how should i proceed with leveling in each class to build the perfect combination for my little bomber. lol XD
First, as always, you should always play what’s fun for you.
They said, barbarian and artificer don’t mix well. One big problem is you can’t cast spells or concentrate on spells while you are raging, so that undercuts a lot of what artificers do.
Second, barbarians usually dump int, but to pull this off, you’d need at least a 13 int. And as barbs already want 3 high scores, it wo old make you very MAD.
What you do have going for you is barbarians are good at throwing things and you don’t need to be an artificer to make a thrown weapon. Take a background that give you proficiency in alchemist’s supplies, and you can make alchemists fire, which I think is about as close to a thrown bomb as there is (I may be forgetting some however.) The problem there is those force a save, so they’re not an attack, so it won’t help you maintain your rage.
Another option could be to work with your DM and see if you can reflavor something like throwing a hand axe as some kind of very small grenade.
It will be a tough build. Artificer/Armorer get arcane armor that has no strength requirment and built in weapons that use INT for attack and damage. Barbarians only get rage bonus damage on strength based attacks.
The artificer/alchemist might sound like a good combo for your bomber but the alchemist is just horrendously designed and underpowered.
The cartographer might work with barbarian. The portal jump says you can forfeit half your movement to teleport 10 feet, every turn. Its not casting a spell, and its not a magic action, so in theory you could do it while raging.
The other 2 subclasses, basicaly give you mechanical pets. The artillerist gives you a gun that exists for an hour and gives you a bonus action attavk, but i think it uses your INT for tohit and dmg rolls. Same with the battlesmith: a lot of its features base off your int. So youd need a high int for the pets to be good but youd want high str to use your rage bonus damage.
Cartographer would at least let you short range teleport every turn and doenst care about your int. Just set into to multiclassing min requirment.
Would it be possible for you to share where you found this information? I’m very curious about their arguments as to why this is a good combination. I found very little to corroborate this on my end.
I will say gnome and barbarian is a great combination, so I wouldn’t change that part! With your DM’s permission, perhaps you could use the homebrewed Custom Background for 5.5 to give yourself the right stats as well as a tool proficiency to reflect your character’s interest in explosives. I’m not sure what that would be offhand, but I digress.
Assuming you are using point buy, the ideal build would be 15+2, 14, 15+1, 8, 10, 8. To better tell your character’s story, you could swap intellect with wisdom to make them at least average inteligence.
The thing with Battlesmith Artificers is that they get to dump their strength stat and attack with their intellect (similar to Armorer Artificers not needing strength for their heavy armor). One thing similar to Barbarian you could do if you start out with at least 3 levels of Battlesmith Artificer is go Eldritch Knight Fighter to dump your strength for intellect but still hit people with melee weapons better via weapon proficiencies and have access to wizard spells. That might be too far from your original idea though. Sorry. I’m just brainstorming at this point.
I hope that helps. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Somebody watched Dimension 20's Fantasy High
I tried to find it but i can't, thats why im asking here.
I was rolling my stats and holy moly its awesome. I have 18,17,20,14,9,15!
Dunno why was i so set on artificer, but the person explaining it said it in a way where it made so much sense. :D
I assume that’s with your background bonuses. Call me naive if you will, butI thought the most you could get when rolling is 18. But whatever, if that’s the way your DM had you do it then go with it. As long as the 9 goes into wisdom or charisma, you COULD multiclass with no problem stat wise. I just still don’t see anyplace where a Barbarian/Artificer works. Sorry.
The highest you can get is 18 with 4d6k3, but either they've add the bonuses already or they've forgotten to remove the lowest d6 (I've done that before, but the stats, while good, weren't ridiculous so I didn't question it til later).
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Average roll for stats is like 11.5 i think, multiply by 6 gives a total of 69 or so. Your total is 93 for an average of 15.5
Roll for stats means that about 60% of the time, you get one score that rolls a 16. Anymore than that is a smaller and smaller chance of happening.
All of which is to say, your rolls are so insanely high that you should buy a lottery ticket.
My rule for rolling for stats is (assuming 4 players), have each player roll 1d6 on the table. Take highest 3. Repeat 6 times. Everyone gets same stats, can assign to whatever ability they want.
Cause if you show up with stats like that, youre going to bulldoze things compared to the othrr players.
As far as your character build goes, it occurred to me that throwing a bomb is going to be dex based, rage bonus damage only works for strength attacks, and most artificer features will be int based. On top of that as a barbarian you will want a good con. This is the MADdest build ive seen in a while.
The average roll of 4d6 drop lowest is 12.24, with 13 as your most likely number and a standard deviation of around 2.85. Your average total for rolled stats will be 73.44. The stats here are high enough that, unless they were rolled in the presence of the DM, the DM likely will ask you to reroll them.
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Regarding the core concept, as others have said, these two classes have very little synergy and sometimes actively work against one another. One thing others have not really discussed - not every element of a character needs to have a mechanical component. It sounds like your character concept would be best served by going fully into artificer for the tech parts you want, then use the character’s personality to reflect the rage. Barbarians might be the only class to get a mechanical, primal benefit from rage, but that does not mean other classes cannot get angry.
I'm not so experienced, but I think that an Artificier Armorer isn't fighting so much with spells (especially Guardian). If you mix the Guardian Artificier with World Tree Barbarian you can build an amazing tank after some levels.
The +1 weapon Infusion can help your attacks while the others can finnaly make the Barbarian help the party. Finnaly, I think that if you put your highest or second highest score in your INT. you can strike succesfully with your armor weapons.That weapon deals Thunder damage which bypasses most resistances.It requires to be an armor.
The first issue is multiclass requirements- you’ll need at least 13 in STR, CON, and INT for a Barbarian/Artificer multiclass, and you generally want at least 12-14 DEX on a Barbarian since they can’t use heavy armor. Using point-buy or standard array this is doable at the cost of spreading thin and/or dumping your remaining stats. If you’re rolling, then there’s a chance it just won’t come together out of the gate- albeit there’s also the chance you’ll have high rolls to carry it better.
The second thing is that the synergy is extremely limited- Barbarians want to Rage during combat, and you can’t cast or concentrate on spells while Raging. Thus, most of an Artificer’s kit is off the table for combat, especially the big encounters.
Edit: Adding a few points I didn't have time for earlier- the damage type thing really isn't huge. In 2014 it was pretty common for weapon users to get a +1 weapon sometime around level 5, which pretty much removes any PSB resistances from enemies since they were conditional on a non-magic source. 2024 did away with magical PSB, but it also really scaled back PSB resistance, so swapping a damage type is still more aesthetic than functional against most enemies. Guardian armor isn't very good as a dip pick because it scales with Artificer level, meaning it will quickly fall off if you're not mostly an Artificer. And if you're mostly an Artificer, you probably want to main stat INT, which keeps Rage from being useful since it requires the attacks be made with STR. I guess you could try and stick with just making regular attacks in combat as an Artificer with a dash of Barbarian, but you'll probably find other martials in the party really pulling ahead of you on performance like that.
It's an interesting thought for sure. The Cartographer does really benefit from Int, not just for their spellcasting but also for the portal jump. The real benefit isn't the 10' jump - though that is nice for hopping out of melee - but rather jumping to within 5' of your map holders within 30'. You get INT+1 maps, so if you're +4 you have 5 maps, enough for everyone in a typical party, which creates quite a lot of positioning options. A cartographer can use this to jump as much as 35' using another character's position depending on the layout of play and then still have 15' of movement left.
Your map holders also all get +1d4 to initiative.