New player here. I realize most games don't get to level 20 but I am asking anyway. I cant decide if I should go full 20 wild magic barb and get 24 str and 20 con or if I should multiclass with level 6 champion, get increased chance to crit, an extra feat, and great weapon fighting style that let's me reroll 1s and 2s on damage dice. If I did multiclass, what would be the best level to do it at?
My character needs to spend two of its four ability improvements to get dex up and to max strength. I was planning on using the other two feats on Polearm Master and Greatweapon Mastery (open to other suggestions - maybe Lucky if going for crits?). I was thinking that the extra feat could be nice to get another fighting style in Mariner and get some extra AC, Tough, Mobile, or Lucky.
If you get the chance to go to level 20 with a barbarian, go all the way. Barbarian has one of the best capstone abilities in the game. My only question, why would your Con only go to 20? Con is way more important than Dex to Barbarians. Also, you don't really need PAM and GWM. What race and stats do you have?
We did rolls for stats and my strength, dex, and con scores were 17, 13 and 16 (after race bonuses). My con is 16 so I wasn't planning on adding stats to it. Dex is 13 so one point will get me another point in AC. I need three other points to get strength from 17 to 20. So focusing on those two takes two ability levels.
You should defintealy add to Con. Con is more important to Barbarians than Strength. You can increase your chances to hit by using Reckless Attack and you get extra damage while raging as well. On the other hand, raising Con increases both your AC (and as a barbarian you don't have to many options for raising AC) and your hit points (which are, arguably, more important to a barbarian than AC). Magic items that raise your Strength are also more common than items that raise your Con.
Now, using your first ASI to round of Str and Dex is good move, do that. At level 8 I would definitely raise Con to 18 as well. When it comes to other feats Mariner is UA and so might not be used and it's also not very good. You might as well raise your Con which will give the same AC bonus but also a bunch of extra hit points as well. Sure, you don't get a swimming and climbing speed but more often than not you'll have more use of the extra HP than a climbing speed.
As for other feats GWM is never bad but I advice against PAM since you'll want to keep your bonus action available for wild surge effects. Tough is never a bad feat and neither is Mobile. Lucky is fun because it's useful outside of combat but three re-rolls per day isn't as fantastic as it might seem at first. If you want to go for effectiveness though I'd focus on Con first though. Here's a suggestion on level progress:
Level 4 Round of Strength and Dex.
Level 8 Raise Con to 18
Level 12 Feat of choice. Mobile affects your swimming and climbing speed, Tough makes you a better tank, Lucky is fun and Great Weapon Master increases your damage but can interact with your Wild surge bonus actions.
Level 16 Max out Con. Better AC and more Hit points.
Level 19 Either max out Strength or another feat. If you took GWM at level 12 I wouldn't bother with more strength. You can still probably hit using reckless attack and when you hit you'll do enough damage from GWM, your rage bonus and brutal critical.
This is SUPER helpful, especially regarding PAM - THANK YOU! It just feels so weird thinking that I shouldn't max strength, although it makes sense why con is more important when we have reckless.
Is the reaction attack to entering my space not good enough to take the feat even if I don't end up using the bonus action?
This is SUPER helpful, especially regarding PAM - THANK YOU! It just feels so weird thinking that I shouldn't max strength, although it makes sense why con is more important when we have reckless.
No worries, glad to be of help.
Is the reaction attack to entering my space not good enough to take the feat even if I don't end up using the bonus action?
Hard to say, it's probably a bit situational. The way I see it is that as a barbarian YOU want to close to the enemy so you'll probably have few opportunities when the enemy enters your range and not the other way around. As a barbarian you'll get extra movement at level 5 and Instinctive Pounce at level 7. You will be at the enemy before they even get a chance of coming to you. :)
I've played a paladin that had PAM. It was great for more attacks (which means more smites) but I was lucky if if I got the reach attack even once in every battle.
I also feel that as a wild magic barbarian you want to have your bonus action available for wild surge stuff. All in all it's probably a matter of personal preference. You'll have access to wild surges for quite a while before you have to choose a feat at level 12 so you can always play around for a bit and see if you feel that you really even need PAM.
New player here. I realize most games don't get to level 20 but I am asking anyway. I cant decide if I should go full 20 wild magic barb and get 24 str and 20 con or if I should multiclass with level 6 champion, get increased chance to crit, an extra feat, and great weapon fighting style that let's me reroll 1s and 2s on damage dice. If I did multiclass, what would be the best level to do it at?
High levels of Barbarian are generally bad so multiclassing into Fighter can be an excellent choice, but Champion is absolute garbage and you should choose a better subclass; similarly, GWF is easily in the running for (and usually wins) the competition for worst fighting style in the game. When it is best to multiclass depends heavily on the rest of your build and what your intent is for the character; if you're planning on going to Fighter 5 or higher, you generally want to stop at Barbarian 4 or lower, because of how Extra Attack doesn't stack.
My character needs to spend two of its four ability improvements to get dex up and to max strength.
I don't understand this, but assuming you're at Dex 14, Constitution is a better investment for you than Dexterity. If you're talking about expected ASIs, you should get 5 of them with a monoclass build on your way to level 20, and the only ability score it's particularly important to get to 20 is Strength (and Constitution for a monoclassed Barbarian, to make the capstone better).
I was planning on using the other two feats
Who in the what now? I'm more certain than ever you're counting up all of your ASIs, but 6 total with a monoclassed Barbarian implies you're a Variant Human or Custom Lineage, and you haven't said that. Very confusing.
on Polearm Master and Greatweapon Mastery (open to other suggestions - maybe Lucky if going for crits?).
These two are the gold standard for engaging in melee combat with a Strength-based weapon, no suggestions.
I was thinking that the extra feat could be nice to get another fighting style in Mariner and get some extra AC, Tough, Mobile, or Lucky.
Mariner isn't a fighting style and fighting styles are routinely worse than feats, so it's wasteful to spend a feat on a style. If this is the "extra" feat from Fighter 6, the continuation of the gold standard is upgrading PAM with Sentinel.
We did rolls for stats and my strength, dex, and con scores were 17, 13 and 16 (after race bonuses). My con is 16 so I wasn't planning on adding stats to it. Dex is 13 so one point will get me another point in AC. I need three other points to get strength from 17 to 20. So focusing on those two takes two ability levels.
Ah, I see. Your first ASI should definitely be Dex 14 Str 18. Your second is more up in the air between Str 20 and something else, like Con 18. Not sure if you've done the math on your core defining class feature, but here you go:
On a 1, 3, or 8, which is 37.5% of the time, you will hurt your enemies with an effect whose save DC is based on your Con.
On a 5, which is 12.5% of the time, you get an ability that's worse the better your AC is and better the more hit points you have (so you expect to be hit more often); because Reckless Attack will make a high AC significantly less of an issue, this ability also scales with Con (you need to be alive for the Force damage to emit from you), just not as well as the above.
That brings the number of Con-based abilities to 50%.
On a 6, or 12.5% of the time, you will get an AC buff, which is better the higher your AC already is, so it will scale with your Dex up until 14, then stop scaling until you can get your AC to 18 or higher while naked. Due to your shabby ability scores, this will never happen, so you can treat it as simply scaling up to 14.
On a 2 or 7, which is 25% of the time, you will get a movement effect which ignores your statline.
On a 4, or 12.5% of the time, you'll get a nearly entirely useless ability which, if you do use it, can be manipulated to scale with your Strength or Dexterity; as a general rule you'll simply not use this ability if you roll it.
Once you get your Dexterity to 14, that brings your abilities that don't meaningfully scale to 50%.
So fully half the time, your subclass wants you to have higher Con.
This is SUPER helpful, especially regarding PAM - THANK YOU! It just feels so weird thinking that I shouldn't max strength, although it makes sense why con is more important when we have reckless.
Is the reaction attack to entering my space not good enough to take the feat even if I don't end up using the bonus action?
You will 100% end up using the bonus action - you only rage once per battle, as a general rule. You only have a 3/8 (37.5%) chance of rolling an effect that will consume your bonus action, and of those, only 1 of them (if you roll a 2) is so good that you can safely assume you'll prefer it to the PAM attack (the other two rely on how susceptible your target is to the kind of save the ability inflicts - e.g. if you roll an 8, the effect is incredible but targets a save most foes are good at).
Assuming you want at at least 5 levels of Barbarian, 6 will get you Bolstering Magic and +1 rage/day, while 7 gets you nearly nothing (initiative is additive because you're contesting multiple other rolls, not a single static DC, which means advantage is worth +3.325 to the roll; a good initiative bonus is instead your proficiency bonus or an ability score you care about) and 8 gets you actually nothing compared to the equivalent level of some other class. Accordingly, 7 or 8 is a good time to dip out for Fighter. In terms of subclasses, Battle Master is the standard all Fighter subclasses are judged by and you can't go wrong with it provided you pick good maneuvers; the other particularly low-hanging fruit is Rune Knight, as it also employs effects whose save DCs are determined by your Con (just never take the Frost rune and it's hard to go wrong, although in your case the Hill rune is also less useful).
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Hi!
New player here. I realize most games don't get to level 20 but I am asking anyway. I cant decide if I should go full 20 wild magic barb and get 24 str and 20 con or if I should multiclass with level 6 champion, get increased chance to crit, an extra feat, and great weapon fighting style that let's me reroll 1s and 2s on damage dice. If I did multiclass, what would be the best level to do it at?
My character needs to spend two of its four ability improvements to get dex up and to max strength. I was planning on using the other two feats on Polearm Master and Greatweapon Mastery (open to other suggestions - maybe Lucky if going for crits?). I was thinking that the extra feat could be nice to get another fighting style in Mariner and get some extra AC, Tough, Mobile, or Lucky.
Any thoughts and help would be appreciated!
If you get the chance to go to level 20 with a barbarian, go all the way. Barbarian has one of the best capstone abilities in the game. My only question, why would your Con only go to 20? Con is way more important than Dex to Barbarians. Also, you don't really need PAM and GWM. What race and stats do you have?
We did rolls for stats and my strength, dex, and con scores were 17, 13 and 16 (after race bonuses). My con is 16 so I wasn't planning on adding stats to it. Dex is 13 so one point will get me another point in AC. I need three other points to get strength from 17 to 20. So focusing on those two takes two ability levels.
You should defintealy add to Con. Con is more important to Barbarians than Strength. You can increase your chances to hit by using Reckless Attack and you get extra damage while raging as well. On the other hand, raising Con increases both your AC (and as a barbarian you don't have to many options for raising AC) and your hit points (which are, arguably, more important to a barbarian than AC). Magic items that raise your Strength are also more common than items that raise your Con.
Now, using your first ASI to round of Str and Dex is good move, do that. At level 8 I would definitely raise Con to 18 as well. When it comes to other feats Mariner is UA and so might not be used and it's also not very good. You might as well raise your Con which will give the same AC bonus but also a bunch of extra hit points as well. Sure, you don't get a swimming and climbing speed but more often than not you'll have more use of the extra HP than a climbing speed.
As for other feats GWM is never bad but I advice against PAM since you'll want to keep your bonus action available for wild surge effects. Tough is never a bad feat and neither is Mobile. Lucky is fun because it's useful outside of combat but three re-rolls per day isn't as fantastic as it might seem at first. If you want to go for effectiveness though I'd focus on Con first though. Here's a suggestion on level progress:
This is SUPER helpful, especially regarding PAM - THANK YOU! It just feels so weird thinking that I shouldn't max strength, although it makes sense why con is more important when we have reckless.
Is the reaction attack to entering my space not good enough to take the feat even if I don't end up using the bonus action?
No worries, glad to be of help.
Hard to say, it's probably a bit situational. The way I see it is that as a barbarian YOU want to close to the enemy so you'll probably have few opportunities when the enemy enters your range and not the other way around. As a barbarian you'll get extra movement at level 5 and Instinctive Pounce at level 7. You will be at the enemy before they even get a chance of coming to you. :)
I've played a paladin that had PAM. It was great for more attacks (which means more smites) but I was lucky if if I got the reach attack even once in every battle.
I also feel that as a wild magic barbarian you want to have your bonus action available for wild surge stuff. All in all it's probably a matter of personal preference. You'll have access to wild surges for quite a while before you have to choose a feat at level 12 so you can always play around for a bit and see if you feel that you really even need PAM.
High levels of Barbarian are generally bad so multiclassing into Fighter can be an excellent choice, but Champion is absolute garbage and you should choose a better subclass; similarly, GWF is easily in the running for (and usually wins) the competition for worst fighting style in the game. When it is best to multiclass depends heavily on the rest of your build and what your intent is for the character; if you're planning on going to Fighter 5 or higher, you generally want to stop at Barbarian 4 or lower, because of how Extra Attack doesn't stack.
I don't understand this, but assuming you're at Dex 14, Constitution is a better investment for you than Dexterity. If you're talking about expected ASIs, you should get 5 of them with a monoclass build on your way to level 20, and the only ability score it's particularly important to get to 20 is Strength (and Constitution for a monoclassed Barbarian, to make the capstone better).
Who in the what now? I'm more certain than ever you're counting up all of your ASIs, but 6 total with a monoclassed Barbarian implies you're a Variant Human or Custom Lineage, and you haven't said that. Very confusing.
These two are the gold standard for engaging in melee combat with a Strength-based weapon, no suggestions.
Mariner isn't a fighting style and fighting styles are routinely worse than feats, so it's wasteful to spend a feat on a style. If this is the "extra" feat from Fighter 6, the continuation of the gold standard is upgrading PAM with Sentinel.
Ah, I see. Your first ASI should definitely be Dex 14 Str 18. Your second is more up in the air between Str 20 and something else, like Con 18. Not sure if you've done the math on your core defining class feature, but here you go:
So fully half the time, your subclass wants you to have higher Con.
You will 100% end up using the bonus action - you only rage once per battle, as a general rule. You only have a 3/8 (37.5%) chance of rolling an effect that will consume your bonus action, and of those, only 1 of them (if you roll a 2) is so good that you can safely assume you'll prefer it to the PAM attack (the other two rely on how susceptible your target is to the kind of save the ability inflicts - e.g. if you roll an 8, the effect is incredible but targets a save most foes are good at).
Assuming you want at at least 5 levels of Barbarian, 6 will get you Bolstering Magic and +1 rage/day, while 7 gets you nearly nothing (initiative is additive because you're contesting multiple other rolls, not a single static DC, which means advantage is worth +3.325 to the roll; a good initiative bonus is instead your proficiency bonus or an ability score you care about) and 8 gets you actually nothing compared to the equivalent level of some other class. Accordingly, 7 or 8 is a good time to dip out for Fighter. In terms of subclasses, Battle Master is the standard all Fighter subclasses are judged by and you can't go wrong with it provided you pick good maneuvers; the other particularly low-hanging fruit is Rune Knight, as it also employs effects whose save DCs are determined by your Con (just never take the Frost rune and it's hard to go wrong, although in your case the Hill rune is also less useful).