Absurd Class Creation

[Sketchopotamus]

So I'm having this argument with a friend. His argument was that with the proper feats and classes, he could make a pretty good barbarian/sorcerer. And I say that it's not very practical.

Is there a way to make a really good spellcaster class combined with a melee fighter? Excluding Duskblade.

What are your guy's thoughts/ideas?

[NotScaryBats]

Generally, you lose power every time you lose a casting level, so Wizard 5 would probably always be better than Wizard 3 / Barb 2 or whatever.

Could you make a good character combining the two? Sure, but probably not any better than one who didn't combine the two.

[eggynack]

The best way to do it barbarian style is probably runescarred berserker (UE, 31). The best way to do magic facebeatery is probably just going druid or cleric, depending on the flavor of beat stick you desire. Just glomming together barbarian and sorcerer doesn't really work all that well, though there are some nice gish builds out there.

[OldTrees1]

Barbarian Socerers can work:

Barbarian 4 / Sorcerer 2 / Abjurant Champion 5 / Eldritch Knight 9

[eggynack]

Basically, as is so often the case when you do something unusual with a caster, attaching sorcery to a barbarian makes the barbarian better, but adding barbarian to a sorcerer makes the sorcerer worse. It's all a matter of perspective.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

So I'm having this argument with a friend. His argument was that with the proper feats and classes, he could make a pretty good barbarian/sorcerer. And I say that it's not very practical.

Is there a way to make a really good spellcaster class combined with a melee fighter? Excluding Duskblade.

What are your guy's thoughts/ideas?

Yes, the arcane gish is one of the strongest melee combatants in the game, but it almost never involves Barbarian.

A Barbarian twist on a fairly standard gish build would be Barbarian 1/ Fighter 1/ Wizard 4/ Spellsword 1/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Incantatrix 4/ Eldritch Knight 4. You would trade Fast Movement for Pounce via the lion spiritual totem in CC, and you would very seldom even want to actually use your Rage as it would prevent you from casting spells.

[Kudaku]

Enough optimization can make most class concepts viable as long as you're not planning to join the DPR olympics. That said, barbarian/sorcerer is one of the more counter-intuitive combinations.

[Particle_Man]

Although its Pathfinder cousin has barbarian/oracle/rage prophet, for what that is worth. Oracle is kinda sorta a divine sorcerer.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You can use Barbarian as the melee base in any standard gish build. Rage becomes pretty useless unless you're doing some kind of persist-o-mancer, since you can't cast while it's active, but it's not a bad start-- grab Pounce and Improved Trip right off the bat.

Gish builds usually take a few levels of a caster class, one or two of a martial, then go into Abjurant Champion. From there, there are plenty of options-- Jade Pheonix Mage is a great one if you're allowed Tome of Battle. Knight Phantom is OK. Eldrich Knight works. If you went Paladin/Sorcerer, Sacred Exorcist is a pretty fitting way to round things out.

[Anxe]

I'm running a Barbarian Cleric right now. I buff myself prior to combat, then I rage and go in. It's not very different from having a different cleric buff up a full barbarian before combat though.

Also, what level build are we talking about here?

[nedz]

Start with Barbarian 1 / Sorcerer 1
Favour Strength and Charisma
Take the spells Enlarge Person and Fist of Stone
Take the feat Power Attack

It will take you a couple of rounds to buff, but then you get to go all Incredible Hulk on them. Hilarious.

[Malimar]

I'm not seeing any love in this thread for Rage Mage (CW), the class designed for combining barbarian and arcane spellcaster. Is it a trap?

Looking at it now, it looks like a trap, yeah. Only half spell progression, slow rage progression, spell rage isn't very good, gets only a wussy 10% armor spell failure reducer... jeez, it doesn't even have full BAB. Yeah, this class is trap, and isn't at all the proper way to combine barbarian and sorcerer.

[SiuiS]

So I'm having this argument with a friend. His argument was that with the proper feats and classes, he could make a pretty good barbarian/sorcerer. And I say that it's not very practical.

Is there a way to make a really good spellcaster class combined with a melee fighter? Excluding Duskblade.

What are your guy's thoughts/ideas?

Define pretty good. I mean, for some games that would be downright overpowered. I had a barbarian/devil hunter/champion of Gwynhyfar get shut down because I breezed through too many combats (and destroyed the ineptly played Balor the DM thought would 'retire' me in one round). I abandoned him and rolled a VoP monk who was also an awakened horse and managed to miss most of my attacks on a twelve attack sequence every round, which made things more fun for everybody.


Because the mental image of a horse trying and failing to pin someone is hilarious.

[Petrocorus]

If you're going to use Barbarian, then you probably want to give up rage because it will rapidly become useless. You'll get Favoured enemy instead. Then you can ask your DM if he let you take the Arcane Hunter ACF.

Unless you go into specific Barbarian gish PrC like the aforementioned Runescared Berseker, Rage Mage (CW) (less good), Champion of Gwynharwyf (BoED) (Which gives the Barb all Paladin goodies and spellcasting).