Howdy! Hope I'm posting this in the right place, but I'm looking for a bit of advice on a character concept I have. She's currently a Lvl 3 Soulknife Rogue, which has been a joy to play so far. However, I want to try multiclassing her into a Zealot Barbarian purely for the flavor for her story. I know there's not a lot of synergy between the two classes, so I wanted to ask some general questions and try to get advice.
Questions: - What's the best way to handle raging in combat? Can I still sneak attack while raging? - I plan on multiclassing into Barbarian at Lvl 4-Lvl 6 so I can reach the Zealot subclass. Starting at Lvl 7, would it be better to put levels into rogue or barbarian? - What are some good feats to look into for the future? She currently has the Mobile feat.
Extra Info, If Needed: She's a kobold, and her stats are as follows: 16 strength / 18 dex / 16 con / 16 intelligence / 13 wisdom / 18 charisma (If these stats sound insane yes they are lol, the campaign I'm in uses the Avrae Threshold command to roll for stats and it allows for some pretty crazy looking numbers. Stats were rolled randomly and legitimately.)
Any help for how to make this work in the best possible way for combat would be appreciated! I've never played Soulknife Rogue OR Zealot Barbarian before so any advice really helps!
Well, my first piece of advice here is honestly that this multiclass is likely to be an extremely unsatisfying play experience. Speaking from firsthand knowledge, trying to do a 50/50 split this early generally just means you’ll be lackluster in both fields- particularly in a case like this where you’re splitting between a technical subclass and a tanky one. If all you want is flavor, roleplay and feats are much better ways to express that than multiclassing, particularly given how much level investment you’re talking about. Not gatekeeping right and wrong play, just outlining some pitfalls.
Yes, you can Sneak Attack while raging, although you’ll need to use STR as your attack stat to get the Rage bonus damage and use a finesse weapon to get Sneak Attack- this effectively means that when you rage you’re trading 1 point of your to hit bonus for 1 point of damage when it comes to weapon rolls.
Regarding level up path, if nothing else I strongly recommend you invest another 2 or 3 levels in Rogue before you dip- 5th level is a big spike in class performance that a 3/2 split won’t match. Beyond that, it depends how you want to play. As I said, the two subclasses cover very different areas and there’s no real synergy between them. If I had to pick I’d say Rogue because you’re going to be notably light on the tanking features a full barbarian would have, so you’ll be playing more catch-up trying to fit that niche.
Howdy! Hope I'm posting this in the right place, but I'm looking for a bit of advice on a character concept I have. She's currently a Lvl 3 Soulknife Rogue, which has been a joy to play so far. However, I want to try multiclassing her into a Zealot Barbarian purely for the flavor for her story. I know there's not a lot of synergy between the two classes, so I wanted to ask some general questions and try to get advice.
Questions: - What's the best way to handle raging in combat? Can I still sneak attack while raging? - I plan on multiclassing into Barbarian at Lvl 4-Lvl 6 so I can reach the Zealot subclass. Starting at Lvl 7, would it be better to put levels into rogue or barbarian? - What are some good feats to look into for the future? She currently has the Mobile feat.
Extra Info, If Needed: She's a kobold, and her stats are as follows: 16 strength / 18 dex / 16 con / 16 intelligence / 13 wisdom / 18 charisma (If these stats sound insane yes they are lol, the campaign I'm in uses the Avrae Threshold command to roll for stats and it allows for some pretty crazy looking numbers. Stats were rolled randomly and legitimately.)
You want to go at least 5 barbarian. Yes you can sneak attack as a barbarian but almost all barbarian features revolve around using STR for your attacks so you will need to do that with your soul knife blades to get substantial benefits from Barbarian. Barbarian unlike Rogue gains power by gaining attacks rather than increasing damage on those attacks which happens at their 5th level. So you'll want to go straight to level 5 Zealot Barbarian picking up a Strength ASI at 4-Barb. There aren't really any feats that do much to benefit you if you are using your Soul Knife blades, so at 9th level I'd take the 4th level in Rogue to max out your Strength. After that it doesn't matter much, build them however you like.
There is actually decent synergy between Rogue & Barbarian, because finesse weapons can use either STR or DEX for attacks and nothing about Rogue bars them from using medium armour or shields. So a Rogue-Barb multiclass prioritizes STR. Since you are a Soul Knife you will want to keep a free hand so you can use that bonus action attack that already adds your ability modifier to the damage, but you can always put on magical medium armour if your AC starts falling behind. Rage gives you a +2 bonus to damage, and resistance to a lot of damage significantly boosting the survivability of a Rogue, at 2nd level you get Reckless attack that guarantees you can sneak attack every round more-or-less, at third level you'll get another "one-per-turn-on-a-hit" damage that will keep you on pace with full-rogue damage, at 4th you pick up that STR ASI to ensure you are hitting with your attacks and get that +1 damage, at 5th you get a whole 3rd attack each round for another 1d6+STR+2 damage and another change to land your sneak attack.
Then go back to Rogue for another STR-ASI ensuring you have your highest chance to hit and another +1 damage on each attack (up to +3 total per turn) and you might as well pick up Rogue-5 for Uncanny dodge and an extra sneak attack die.
In a higher-level (starting at level 11) campaign that fizzled out, I started to play a halfling soulknife 5/Zealot 6 (or the levels may have been 6/5) in what was going to be a heist. He had expertise in Athletics, and the DM was all in on letting me "grapple" larger creatures to climb on them. The campaign never really got off the ground, and I certainly don't think this was an optimized build, but I think it would have been a lot of fun to play.
It’s basically already been said, but it’s actually a good combination when done right. According to my research (Dorthy Ann: Magic School Bus. Anyone?), it actually works better with a Barbarian going into Rogue at level 5. While you can’t get the starting proficiency benefits from it now, you could still switch over at the right moment to pump 5 levels into Barbarian. HOWEVER this involves ether using shieldmaster with athletics to knock enemies prone or focusing either grappling or a dexterity focused setup, neither of which really go with soul knife.
The other recommended route I found was taking at least two levels in rogue and then at least 5 in Barbarian for starting off as a rogue like yourself. Since you aren’t going to be using shield master with soul knife, just focus on using uncanny dodge with your high HP and reckless attack to ensure your sneak attack is always on.
so in conclusion, I’d immediately go into barbarian for five levels to get extra attack plus all of the other goodies available.
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Howdy! Hope I'm posting this in the right place, but I'm looking for a bit of advice on a character concept I have. She's currently a Lvl 3 Soulknife Rogue, which has been a joy to play so far. However, I want to try multiclassing her into a Zealot Barbarian purely for the flavor for her story. I know there's not a lot of synergy between the two classes, so I wanted to ask some general questions and try to get advice.
Questions:
- What's the best way to handle raging in combat? Can I still sneak attack while raging?
- I plan on multiclassing into Barbarian at Lvl 4-Lvl 6 so I can reach the Zealot subclass. Starting at Lvl 7, would it be better to put levels into rogue or barbarian?
- What are some good feats to look into for the future? She currently has the Mobile feat.
Extra Info, If Needed:
She's a kobold, and her stats are as follows:
16 strength / 18 dex / 16 con / 16 intelligence / 13 wisdom / 18 charisma
(If these stats sound insane yes they are lol, the campaign I'm in uses the Avrae Threshold command to roll for stats and it allows for some pretty crazy looking numbers. Stats were rolled randomly and legitimately.)
Any help for how to make this work in the best possible way for combat would be appreciated! I've never played Soulknife Rogue OR Zealot Barbarian before so any advice really helps!
Well, my first piece of advice here is honestly that this multiclass is likely to be an extremely unsatisfying play experience. Speaking from firsthand knowledge, trying to do a 50/50 split this early generally just means you’ll be lackluster in both fields- particularly in a case like this where you’re splitting between a technical subclass and a tanky one. If all you want is flavor, roleplay and feats are much better ways to express that than multiclassing, particularly given how much level investment you’re talking about. Not gatekeeping right and wrong play, just outlining some pitfalls.
Yes, you can Sneak Attack while raging, although you’ll need to use STR as your attack stat to get the Rage bonus damage and use a finesse weapon to get Sneak Attack- this effectively means that when you rage you’re trading 1 point of your to hit bonus for 1 point of damage when it comes to weapon rolls.
Regarding level up path, if nothing else I strongly recommend you invest another 2 or 3 levels in Rogue before you dip- 5th level is a big spike in class performance that a 3/2 split won’t match. Beyond that, it depends how you want to play. As I said, the two subclasses cover very different areas and there’s no real synergy between them. If I had to pick I’d say Rogue because you’re going to be notably light on the tanking features a full barbarian would have, so you’ll be playing more catch-up trying to fit that niche.
You want to go at least 5 barbarian. Yes you can sneak attack as a barbarian but almost all barbarian features revolve around using STR for your attacks so you will need to do that with your soul knife blades to get substantial benefits from Barbarian. Barbarian unlike Rogue gains power by gaining attacks rather than increasing damage on those attacks which happens at their 5th level. So you'll want to go straight to level 5 Zealot Barbarian picking up a Strength ASI at 4-Barb. There aren't really any feats that do much to benefit you if you are using your Soul Knife blades, so at 9th level I'd take the 4th level in Rogue to max out your Strength. After that it doesn't matter much, build them however you like.
There is actually decent synergy between Rogue & Barbarian, because finesse weapons can use either STR or DEX for attacks and nothing about Rogue bars them from using medium armour or shields. So a Rogue-Barb multiclass prioritizes STR. Since you are a Soul Knife you will want to keep a free hand so you can use that bonus action attack that already adds your ability modifier to the damage, but you can always put on magical medium armour if your AC starts falling behind. Rage gives you a +2 bonus to damage, and resistance to a lot of damage significantly boosting the survivability of a Rogue, at 2nd level you get Reckless attack that guarantees you can sneak attack every round more-or-less, at third level you'll get another "one-per-turn-on-a-hit" damage that will keep you on pace with full-rogue damage, at 4th you pick up that STR ASI to ensure you are hitting with your attacks and get that +1 damage, at 5th you get a whole 3rd attack each round for another 1d6+STR+2 damage and another change to land your sneak attack.
Then go back to Rogue for another STR-ASI ensuring you have your highest chance to hit and another +1 damage on each attack (up to +3 total per turn) and you might as well pick up Rogue-5 for Uncanny dodge and an extra sneak attack die.
This was an extremely helpful read and exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much for the advice!
In a higher-level (starting at level 11) campaign that fizzled out, I started to play a halfling soulknife 5/Zealot 6 (or the levels may have been 6/5) in what was going to be a heist. He had expertise in Athletics, and the DM was all in on letting me "grapple" larger creatures to climb on them. The campaign never really got off the ground, and I certainly don't think this was an optimized build, but I think it would have been a lot of fun to play.
It’s basically already been said, but it’s actually a good combination when done right. According to my research (Dorthy Ann: Magic School Bus. Anyone?), it actually works better with a Barbarian going into Rogue at level 5. While you can’t get the starting proficiency benefits from it now, you could still switch over at the right moment to pump 5 levels into Barbarian. HOWEVER this involves ether using shieldmaster with athletics to knock enemies prone or focusing either grappling or a dexterity focused setup, neither of which really go with soul knife.
The other recommended route I found was taking at least two levels in rogue and then at least 5 in Barbarian for starting off as a rogue like yourself. Since you aren’t going to be using shield master with soul knife, just focus on using uncanny dodge with your high HP and reckless attack to ensure your sneak attack is always on.
so in conclusion, I’d immediately go into barbarian for five levels to get extra attack plus all of the other goodies available.