So I have this character. He has three levels in fighter and went battlemaster, abd he just multiclassed into barbarian. He somehow got his hands on plate armor and my DM is letting me break it down into half-plate so I can get those sweet sweet rage bonuses. Dude has a 20 AC already with half-plate, 16 DEX, a shield, and the defense fighting style.
The reason I multiclassed is because my DM came to me and said it'd be cool if I wanted to. I play him like he's somewhat bipolar, he's really sweet and wholesome outside combat, but inside combat he's rediculously brutal, like unnecessarily so. DM thought it'd be funny to have my rage reflect that.
Anyways enough backstory, I'm planning on taking barb to three to get path of the beast, then taking duel wielder. (I know that doesn't work RAW, but DM is cool with it so rule zero)
Is this a good path to optimization? Originally I wanted to make a DEX fighter, but then he gave me the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, so I had to be like: "Nevermind, stronk I guess."
You're only asking for optimization help, but I see a couple yellow flags and I gotta call them out because I'm annoying like that and other people might read it that could benefit from hearing it:
Your DM should not be making class choices for your character. Sounds like this instance was all fine and agreeable, but I have found the game works best when the players fully control their character and the DM has to be content with only controlling literally every other facet of the universe. Note that giving you the Gauntlets also kind of pushed you in a direction you weren't intending, so there have been at least two instances of this (unless it was a totally random drop) that might suggest a pattern - if these little nudges continue and ever start to bother you, you need to bring it up with the DM.
You don't need to have Barbarian levels to be angry/bipolar. Sounds like your concept was working just fine before the MC. It's nice to have mechanical hooks for RP, but your description of your actions is vastly more effective in communicating who you are than some altered damage numbers. And Battlemaster is not wanting for powers that reflect an aggressive fighter anyway.
DW with Path of the Beast is going to be very strong - it's not RAW for a reason. Your DM will probably regret allowing it.
Anyway, feel free to ignore all that if everything is going fine at the table.
As for optimization, your choices are solid. The main question is what order to take your levels in. Extra Attacks is huge, but with your houserules getting your beast form is actually even more potent as long as you have few enough fights per day that you can usually be raging for them. So you have a choice of two more levels in Fighter for an ASI and Extra Attacks, or two more levels in Barb for Danger Sense and your beast form. I'd go the former if you have long adventuring days and the latter if not.
If it were me, I'd probably start putting levels into Barb and never look back, except maybe to grab the ASI at Fighter 4 after Barb level 5 or 6. But it really depends on what you want. Both paths have useful stuff.
So the core question is... is a Battlemaster/Beast a a good combo, vs. Battlemaster/[Other Barbarian Subclass]?
Beasts potentially get more attacks per round than other basic Barbarians when using claws (two+1 during Attack action once you have Extra Attack), and if your DM is open to you getting a bonus action claw attack from Two-Weapon Fighting, then you're making four attacks per round right from Fighter 3/Beast 3. That's 5 levels earlier than a TWF or PAM pure fighter would be able to get four attacks per round! And Battlemasters care a lot about having multiple attacks per round, because it's multiple opportunities for maneuvers, or to land one important maneuver against a tough opponent. So yes, I think that the two subclasses go together quite well... but which to focus on after your Battlemaster 3/Beast 3?
Barbarians scale up very slowly. After you unlock Beast powers at 3, it basically takes until level 6 to get... one more rage/long rest. It's essentially not until level 9 that you get a feature that actually improves your attacks (rage bonus damage from +2 to +3 per hit), so... is 6 levels worth 4 more damage per round (and some other misc. ribbon abilities)? Maybe not. Having enough Rages per day to match the number of fights per day your DM hands out, that's about the only concrete benefit you're going to see from any more Barbarian levels after 3.
More Fighter levels, on the other hand (1) gets you more feats faster, (2) gives you more maneuvers and superiority dice and bigger dice, and (3) can even give you more attacks per round, if you can reach Fighter 11 by the end of the campaign. That's just plain better than learning how to jump further or have faster initiative or even do one more rage damage on hits, sorry but true.
Those Gauntlets are rather freeing, really. 19 Strength is 1 less to hit and 1 less damage than a "proper" Fighter with 20 strength should be doing with their swings... but you have a whole extra attack per round to balance that out. You'll never want to be a naked Con/Dex barbarian, because you invested in Defensive fighting style already, so I doubt you'll want to spend ASI on any more +Dex... but also, you're already building yourself into a plan that doesn't rely on PAM and GWM, so there's two more feats you might ordinarily be tempted to take but don't need to. It sounds like you're pretty freed up to take other feats like Sentinel, Tough, Skill Expert (Athletics), Medium Armor Master (bleh), Martial Adept (yesss!!), and Fighting Initiate (don't waste it on TWF style for +4 damage on the Bonus Action attack... take Superior Technique instead!!!)... maybe Grappler, if you plan on using Grappling Strike a lot?
Assuming that you're Str [19], Dex 16, and a Battlemaster 3/Barbarian 1 right now (character level 4) ... what's your Con at, probably just 15?
CL 5 & 6: Battlemaster 3/Beast 3
CL 7: Battlemaster 4. Dual Wielder, since it sounds like that's a Feat Tax your DM wants you to take for the TWF claws benefit (AC +1, should be 19 with no Shield). Two claws attacks/Attack, and one more more as a bonus action (3 attacks/round).
CL 8: Battlemaster 5. Three claws attacks/Attack, and one more as a bonus action (4 attacks/round).
CL 9: Battlemaster 6. Fighting Initiate (Superior Technique), so you have four d8 superiority die, and one d6. 5/23 maneuvers known.
CL 10: Battlemaster 7. two more maneuvers, 7/23 known.
CL 11: Battlemaster 8. Martial Adept, so you have four d8 superiority die, and two d6. 9/23 maneuvers known.
CL 12 & 13: Battlemaster 10. all six superiority dice become d10's. Two more maneuvers, 11/23 known.
CL 14: Battlemaster 11: Now have four claws attacks/Attack, and one more per bonus action (5 attacks/round).
That's a damn good battlemaster build. And even if you run out of Rages, worst case scenario... just dual wield a couple of Battleaxes or something for that fight, and just have one fewer Attack action attack than normal? No big deal at all!
DW with Path of the Beast is going to be very strong - it's not RAW for a reason. Your DM will probably regret allowing it.
It's harmless, since it almost always nerfs the Barb's total output, so it's fine - clawing a target 4 times is always going to be less damage than swinging a longsword twice and a claw twice, which is what RAW supports - without the feat tax, same Barb can do the same thing with shortswords, meaning the claw damage isn't nerfed, but it's still harmless.
It's harmless, since it almost always nerfs the Barb's total output, so it's fine - clawing a target 4 times is always going to be less damage than swinging a longsword twice and a claw twice, which is what RAW supports - without the feat tax, same Barb can do the same thing with shortswords, meaning the claw damage isn't nerfed, but it's still harmless.
I don't quite understand that math.... dual wielding longswords (two Attack, one bonus) is mutually exclusive with having claws in the first place, so I don't see how you would braid them together. The real strength of claws without TWF, is you can hold a shield in one hand while taking three claw attacks with the other, which is basically Spear+Shield PAM without the feat. By allowing TWF claws and Dual Wielder benefits, the DM has allowed a Beast 3/Fighter 5 to have the same number of attacks as a Fighter 11 TWF three levels early, or a Beast 3/Fighter 11 the same number of attacks as a Fighter 20 TWF six levels early.
Are you using Tasha’s optional rules? If so and you take one more level in fighter, you could swap out your fighting style (and drop wearing armor for the con bonus, plus your full dex bonus to AC), if another one works better with your plans.
Also, it’s always worth mentioning that the extra attack from fighter 5 and barb 5 don’t stack (just because lots of people think they do). The only way to get to the third attack is fighter 11.
DW with Path of the Beast is going to be very strong - it's not RAW for a reason. Your DM will probably regret allowing it.
It's harmless, since it almost always nerfs the Barb's total output, so it's fine - clawing a target 4 times is always going to be less damage than swinging a longsword twice and a claw twice, which is what RAW supports - without the feat tax, same Barb can do the same thing with shortswords, meaning the claw damage isn't nerfed, but it's still harmless.
How exactly are you doing 2 attacks with a longsword and two claw attacks? You don't get the BA unless you're holding a sword in each hand, and if that's the case you don't have a hand free to claw. If you're trying to do weapon-juggling shenanigans that give you all the benefits of DW but you also have a hand free to claw, then I would say that reading of the rules is also outside the scope of RAI.
There is no barb build that gets 4 attacks all day long out of the box with the only condition being rage. That's what PoB + DW allows and what I was warning against. Barbs have a healthy static damage mod and great accuracy with Reckless Attacks so adding an attack adds a lot more damage than bumping your weapon die.
So I have this character. He has three levels in fighter and went battlemaster, abd he just multiclassed into barbarian. He somehow got his hands on plate armor and my DM is letting me break it down into half-plate so I can get those sweet sweet rage bonuses. Dude has a 20 AC already with half-plate, 16 DEX, a shield, and the defense fighting style.
The reason I multiclassed is because my DM came to me and said it'd be cool if I wanted to. I play him like he's somewhat bipolar, he's really sweet and wholesome outside combat, but inside combat he's rediculously brutal, like unnecessarily so. DM thought it'd be funny to have my rage reflect that.
Anyways enough backstory, I'm planning on taking barb to three to get path of the beast, then taking duel wielder. (I know that doesn't work RAW, but DM is cool with it so rule zero)
Is this a good path to optimization? Originally I wanted to make a DEX fighter, but then he gave me the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, so I had to be like: "Nevermind, stronk I guess."
It seems okay to me, but you might want to get Multiattack asap, so if you plan on going to 5 or higher with fighter I'd do that first.
You're only asking for optimization help, but I see a couple yellow flags and I gotta call them out because I'm annoying like that and other people might read it that could benefit from hearing it:
Anyway, feel free to ignore all that if everything is going fine at the table.
As for optimization, your choices are solid. The main question is what order to take your levels in. Extra Attacks is huge, but with your houserules getting your beast form is actually even more potent as long as you have few enough fights per day that you can usually be raging for them. So you have a choice of two more levels in Fighter for an ASI and Extra Attacks, or two more levels in Barb for Danger Sense and your beast form. I'd go the former if you have long adventuring days and the latter if not.
If it were me, I'd probably start putting levels into Barb and never look back, except maybe to grab the ASI at Fighter 4 after Barb level 5 or 6. But it really depends on what you want. Both paths have useful stuff.
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
So the core question is... is a Battlemaster/Beast a a good combo, vs. Battlemaster/[Other Barbarian Subclass]?
Beasts potentially get more attacks per round than other basic Barbarians when using claws (two+1 during Attack action once you have Extra Attack), and if your DM is open to you getting a bonus action claw attack from Two-Weapon Fighting, then you're making four attacks per round right from Fighter 3/Beast 3. That's 5 levels earlier than a TWF or PAM pure fighter would be able to get four attacks per round! And Battlemasters care a lot about having multiple attacks per round, because it's multiple opportunities for maneuvers, or to land one important maneuver against a tough opponent. So yes, I think that the two subclasses go together quite well... but which to focus on after your Battlemaster 3/Beast 3?
Barbarians scale up very slowly. After you unlock Beast powers at 3, it basically takes until level 6 to get... one more rage/long rest. It's essentially not until level 9 that you get a feature that actually improves your attacks (rage bonus damage from +2 to +3 per hit), so... is 6 levels worth 4 more damage per round (and some other misc. ribbon abilities)? Maybe not. Having enough Rages per day to match the number of fights per day your DM hands out, that's about the only concrete benefit you're going to see from any more Barbarian levels after 3.
More Fighter levels, on the other hand (1) gets you more feats faster, (2) gives you more maneuvers and superiority dice and bigger dice, and (3) can even give you more attacks per round, if you can reach Fighter 11 by the end of the campaign. That's just plain better than learning how to jump further or have faster initiative or even do one more rage damage on hits, sorry but true.
Those Gauntlets are rather freeing, really. 19 Strength is 1 less to hit and 1 less damage than a "proper" Fighter with 20 strength should be doing with their swings... but you have a whole extra attack per round to balance that out. You'll never want to be a naked Con/Dex barbarian, because you invested in Defensive fighting style already, so I doubt you'll want to spend ASI on any more +Dex... but also, you're already building yourself into a plan that doesn't rely on PAM and GWM, so there's two more feats you might ordinarily be tempted to take but don't need to. It sounds like you're pretty freed up to take other feats like Sentinel, Tough, Skill Expert (Athletics), Medium Armor Master (bleh), Martial Adept (yesss!!), and Fighting Initiate (don't waste it on TWF style for +4 damage on the Bonus Action attack... take Superior Technique instead!!!)... maybe Grappler, if you plan on using Grappling Strike a lot?
Assuming that you're Str [19], Dex 16, and a Battlemaster 3/Barbarian 1 right now (character level 4) ... what's your Con at, probably just 15?
That's a damn good battlemaster build. And even if you run out of Rages, worst case scenario... just dual wield a couple of Battleaxes or something for that fight, and just have one fewer Attack action attack than normal? No big deal at all!
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
It's harmless, since it almost always nerfs the Barb's total output, so it's fine - clawing a target 4 times is always going to be less damage than swinging a longsword twice and a claw twice, which is what RAW supports - without the feat tax, same Barb can do the same thing with shortswords, meaning the claw damage isn't nerfed, but it's still harmless.
I don't quite understand that math.... dual wielding longswords (two Attack, one bonus) is mutually exclusive with having claws in the first place, so I don't see how you would braid them together. The real strength of claws without TWF, is you can hold a shield in one hand while taking three claw attacks with the other, which is basically Spear+Shield PAM without the feat. By allowing TWF claws and Dual Wielder benefits, the DM has allowed a Beast 3/Fighter 5 to have the same number of attacks as a Fighter 11 TWF three levels early, or a Beast 3/Fighter 11 the same number of attacks as a Fighter 20 TWF six levels early.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Are you using Tasha’s optional rules? If so and you take one more level in fighter, you could swap out your fighting style (and drop wearing armor for the con bonus, plus your full dex bonus to AC), if another one works better with your plans.
Also, it’s always worth mentioning that the extra attack from fighter 5 and barb 5 don’t stack (just because lots of people think they do). The only way to get to the third attack is fighter 11.
How exactly are you doing 2 attacks with a longsword and two claw attacks? You don't get the BA unless you're holding a sword in each hand, and if that's the case you don't have a hand free to claw. If you're trying to do weapon-juggling shenanigans that give you all the benefits of DW but you also have a hand free to claw, then I would say that reading of the rules is also outside the scope of RAI.
There is no barb build that gets 4 attacks all day long out of the box with the only condition being rage. That's what PoB + DW allows and what I was warning against. Barbs have a healthy static damage mod and great accuracy with Reckless Attacks so adding an attack adds a lot more damage than bumping your weapon die.
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