Barbarian Help Needed

[HMS Invincible]

What combination of paladin, barbarian and fighter would make the best front line fighter? Or does codzilla rule still apply? I'm pretty new to 5e but I like optimization. I'll be level 2 elite array, 1 shot.

[hymer]

What combination of paladin, barbarian and fighter would make the best front line fighter? Or does codzilla rule still apply? I'm pretty new to 5e but I like optimization. I'll be level 2 elite array, 1 shot.

What level are we talking? At level 2, druidzilla is at his most dangerous, able to take brown bear shape and outfight anything remotely challenge-appropriate. By level 5, this isn't nearly so big a deal.

To elaborate somewhat (and these are generalities that fall apart at many levels), without knowing much: Barbarians are best at outlasting the foe, dealing fairly steady damage with little in the way of novas compared to the other two, with rage letting them get resistance (half damage) to weapon attacks (and likely energy attacks too later on, depending on choices). Paladins can do some very impressive nova once they get spells. Once they give charisma to all saves to themselves and allies, they have a majot defensive impact on their group, too. Fighters can't nova very often, but they nova hard when they do. Their particular combat options can vary quite a bit, depending on their choice of subclass, and also choices within those subclasses.

[HMS Invincible]

I don't expect to get past lvl 4. Were rotating DM and editions. Are we still playing eggshells with hammers? is tanking or wielding a. Shield a bad idea? Can I hide in full plate well?

[hymer]

I don't expect to get past lvl 4. Were rotating DM and editions. Are we still playing eggshells with hammers? is tanking or wielding a. Shield a bad idea? Can I hide in full plate well?

Well, if there's a moon druid among you, you'll likely have to contend with druidzilla, then. At those levels, you will generally all be eggshells, yes. Low level 5th edition can be quite lethal and swingy.

Wielding a shield can be a fine option, and fully competitive with 2-handing. This goes for all the three classes you mention.

You may not actually get full plate at those levels, but generally speaking you can hide in full plate - but not well.
All heavy and some medium armour types give what is called 'disadvantage' to Stealth checks (which you use to hide and sneak). This replaces ACP from 3.X. Disadvantage plays out by rolling two d20s for the check, and picking the worse of the two rolls. You add your dex modifier to the roll, and if you are 'proficient' in stealth, you add another +2 to it. All in all, it is possible to be reasonably stealthy in heavy armour, but it's an unlikely build. Not least because medium armour restricts Dex bonus to AC to a max of +2, and heavy armour ignores your dex bonus to AC completely, even if it's negative - so many heavy armour wearers take the chance to dump their dex.

[rhouck]

Do you want to tank or deal damage?

I would say race matters more than class if you are only playing until level 4.

Pick Variant Human. Take the Feat option. If you want to tank, take Heavy Armor Master (it is insane at low levels) and be a Fighter (Second Wind keeps you up) or Paladin (Lay On Hands and spells at level 2 keep you up) with a shield and chain mail. If you want to deal damage, then go Polearm Master and choose any of the three.

That's assuming you want to be barbarian/fighter/paladin. As mentioned above, bear druid at levels 2-3 is pretty nutty.

[HMS Invincible]

I assume your talking straight classes, no mulitclassing? There's been no mention of cleric front lining, so thats an improvement.

[Person_Man]

Any class works fine in 5E, particularly at low levels. With a few minor exceptions, even the differences between martial and non-martial classes are pretty marginal when it comes to strait damage output or tanking. Those exceptions are:

Variant Human can choose a Feat at 1st level.

Sharpshooter Feat with the Archery Fighting Style class ability or Heavy Weapon Master Feat with the Barbarian Reckless Attack class ability can significantly increase your damage.
Heavy Armor Master can significantly increase your tanking.
Shield Master lets you Shove as a Bonus Action and gives you psuedo-evasion, and works great with a Barbarian's Rage (which gives you Advantage on Strength checks, like Shove).
Polearm Master gives you an Opportunity Attack fairly often and lets you make a 1d4+Str attack as a Bonus Action.


Assassin Rogue 3 can auto-crit with their attacks as part of an ambush, and all damage dice (including Sneak Attack) is rolled twice.

Paladin can Smite and also cast a Smite spell to get very large burst damage, especially if your DM allows the Great Weapon Fighting Style (re-roll 1 and 2) to apply to the bonus damage. But because of limited spells, you're only doing this a few times per day at most.

Fighter gets Action Surge, which gives you 1 extra Action once per Short Rest, basically doubling your damage output. But some DMs allow very few Short Rests, while others allow many.

Bear Totem Barbarian 3 gets Resistance (50% less damage) to almost everything when in a Rage, though at low levels you can only do so 2 or 3 times per day.

Ranger can cast Hunter's Mark a couple times per day for bonus damage, and the Hunter Ranger subclass ability adds extra damage or an extra attack in common circumstances.

Druid can Wildshape. When they do, they get a new pool of hit points based on their new form. When you reduce them to 0 they revert to their previous form/hit points. And then you can just Wildshape again. This creates an "onion druid" effect that makes them very hard to kill. But while in a Wildshape, most combat Feats don't apply, since they depend on using specific weapons or a shield, which you can't use while in Beast form.

Cleric or Druid or Bard can still heal himself (or others), making it difficult to kill one in most circumstances, and there are a few worthwhile protection buffs out there. Cleric can also cast Spiritual Weapon, which can add significant damage over time in longer combats.

If any caster can cast an area of effect spell and catch multiple enemies in the effect, they typically deal a lot more damage then a non-caster could deal in a single round. But spell slots are pretty limited, and non-cantrip spells do not scale by default (unless you're a Warlock for a subset of his abilities).

But again, pretty much any class will work fine as written.

[Mandragola]

If you only ever expect to play at low levels then heavy armour master is an amazing feat for a variant human. It will substantially reduce the damage you take all the time and also gives you +1 Str, which is very nice.

If you do want to be stealthy you've got a bit of a problem though with fighter or paladin as the heavy armours give disadvantage. In the case of the paladin especially, you probably dump dexterity so you'll have a poor plus to the skill and disadvantage.

Probably the stealthiest "tank" you can be is a barbarian. If you have a strength and dex with a +5 combined bonus then you can have AC 17 with a shield and take half damage from hits while raging. At level 3 you can go totem spec for aspect of the bear and take 50% of all damage. It's probably possible to take a variant human with a feat that adds +1 to str, dex or con, so that you start with 16s in your 3 physical stats and 8s in your mental stats. You'd be tough but not clever, observant or brave!

Half orc barbarians are great. The ability to not fall over once a day when you hit 0hp is pretty phenomenal.

[HMS Invincible]

Elite array doesn't allow that distribution of stats though. Do I need to go straight barb or does dipping into fighter or paladin make it better?

[hymer]

Elite array doesn't allow that distribution of stats though. Do I need to go straight barb or does dipping into fighter or paladin make it better?

That depends a lot on what exactly 'it' is. I think at this point you should look at the classes yourself. You only need to understand the first four levels for this purpose, and how multiclassing works. Then you can find out which abilities make you tick, and find out what's possible and what's impossible to get in one build.

[Giant2005]

Is Strength really a requirement?
If not, I'd recommend Monk. Monks are pretty amazing at low levels and get the most attacks (Even more than a Bear form Druid) but if you want to go Strength-based then a Monk would need to be multiclassed and multiclassing is really inadvisable at such low levels.

[DireSickFish]

Elite array doesn't allow that distribution of stats though. Do I need to go straight barb or does dipping into fighter or paladin make it better?

Multiclassing is much more of a trap option this edition than 3.5. Classes are a lot less front loaded so you give up a lot by dipping in other classes. If you only plan to get to level 4 going straight barbarain or straight fighter is probably better than a dip.

2 levels of fighter is considered a good dip option, but if you do that you lose out on an ASI at 4th level and won't get the option of bear totem (for tanking) or wolf totem (for awesome synergies with the group). If you do manage to make it to level 5 you would be giving up a second attack a round which is huge to miss out on.

I recommend against cross classing until you get more system mastery as it is an easy way to gimp a build.

[HMS Invincible]

In that case, I'm thinking of a Dex con stealth tanky barb. Once I write the stats down, I'll know if there's too many compromises. If so, I'll default to str barb.

[Balor777]

Variant Human can choose a Feat at 1st level.

Sharpshooter Feat with the Archery Fighting Style class ability or Heavy Weapon Master Feat with the Barbarian Reckless Attack class ability can significantly increase your damage.


A fighter with a greatsword gambles to loose 2d6+5 to get a +10.The same barbar gambles 2d6+5+2(rage) to 2d6+5+4(rage)
So its 8,3(with reroll 1-2s)+5 = 13 gambled to add 10 damage for the fighter, and
for barbarrian 14(early levels) to 16 damage(higher levels) gamble to gain +10 damage.


You may find it strange but a barba attacking reclessly a "+3 attack bonus more from AC " enemy, has 88% chances to hit and 64% with -5+10.The same fighter goes from 65% to 40% with -5+10.
You see with or without power attack Barbar has the same ~24% more chances to hit.I doesnt get better with recless attack, so he suffers the same -25% chance to hit penalty.

If you add panadin smites which are higher than the Barbar rage damage youll realise that you actualy LOOSE DPR with -5+10.
A paladin with the improved divine smite d8 bonus should never actualy attack with -5 when he uses the 2d6 smite because he looses a lot of damage per round(2d6+d8= average11.5).
The only setup that is very nice to use -5+10 is polearm master or with the damn hand crossbow expert sharp shooter feat wich is broken as hell btw.

[HMS Invincible]

I finally got around to almost completing my barbarian.
It's only level 1, as I have not read the rules for starting at level 2.

STR 15+1
DEX 14
Con 13+1
Int 10
Wis 12
CHA 8

Human Variant +1 stat and feat.

Bonus feat: unsure between sentinel, shield mastery, great weapon mastery.

Armor:breast plate + shield should give me or 18 armor without penalty to my dex checks.

Weapon: Hand Axe 1d6

Thoughts: I feel a lot of the barb's class features are overlapping or exclusive. You can't rage in heavy armor, you can't use rage with dex attacks, the bonus CON to armor is especially wasted as you need to boost dex and con and str.

[Mandragola]

That's a pretty solid starting array.

As far as feat choice goes, it kind of depends what style of play you want. I think a barbarian with a shield and sentinel is probably very good though. Great weapon mastery isn't quite as good as it initially looks because it uses bonus actions to attack, and barbarians already have a few uses for their bonus actions. But sentinel forces the monsters to either attack you, with your high AC and rage, or be hit by you if they go for other people.

Only thing is you can't start with a breastplate. Actually I don't think barbarians start with any armour at all! You might be able to get some if you buy gear rather than taking the standard equipment, but you'd have to check the costs.

[CrusaderJoe]

Multiclassing is much more of a trap option this edition than 3.5. Classes are a lot less front loaded so you give up a lot by dipping in other classes. If you only plan to get to level 4 going straight barbarain or straight fighter is probably better than a dip.

2 levels of fighter is considered a good dip option, but if you do that you lose out on an ASI at 4th level and won't get the option of bear totem (for tanking) or wolf totem (for awesome synergies with the group). If you do manage to make it to level 5 you would be giving up a second attack a round which is huge to miss out on.

I recommend against cross classing until you get more system mastery as it is an easy way to gimp a build.

Not so at all.

Actually most builds I've seen rely on multiclassing to get the maximum productivity out of a build. If you won't hit level 20 then Multiclassing is fine.*

You don't need high ability scores in this game. They are nice, yes, but not needed like in 4e and 3e. Sadly the d20 does most of the work.

There are so many MC combos that make it worth while that it isn't even funny.

It all depends on what you want and what you think is good. Bear totem is awesome, however if you don't use rage all that much as rely on reckless attack... You can go Barbarian 2 (3,4,5, or 6 whatever) and take the rest if your levels in rogue and you always have sneak attack. This is one of the best combos for melee.

Your assertion that MC is a trap is wrong. If you want feats then yes, don't MC, but if toy want an effective character then MC works just fine.


*edit: or you don't care for your class's capstone and feel you can do better (ranger, cleric (DM reasons), or Sorcerer (ends at 18 for the most part for me)).

[rhouck]

Bonus feat: unsure between sentinel, shield mastery, great weapon mastery.

If you want to go tanky, then sentinel is excellent. It really punishes the enemy if they try to ignore you, and gives you some battlefield control by preventing movement. There are limited uses for reactions, so it's nice to have a feat that gives you more opportunities to use one.

[HMS Invincible]

BTW, I'm starting at lvl 2, aren't there rules for wealth by level? I'll keep the shield if sentinel means they all attack me. Is there a 5 ft step anymore? Can't they use that to shuffle past me? I should get another guy with sentinel. Then the enemy gets extra whacks for doing anything.

Proficiency. Stealth perception sleight of hand, deception and althletics

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

BTW, I'm starting at lvl 2, aren't there rules for wealth by level? I'll keep the shield if sentinel means they all attack me. Is there a 5 ft step anymore? Can't they use that to shuffle past me? I should get another guy with sentinel. Then the enemy gets extra whacks for doing anything.

Proficiency. Stealth perception sleight of hand, deception and althletics

There are starting wealth rules by level (or by tier?) in the DMG. I can't check it right now.

There's no 5' step rule in 5e. While the AoO rules let them run rings around you, they can't step away without provoking an AoO.

Lastly, the Sentinel feat has a line in it that prevents two characters with the feat from "trapping" an enemy.

"When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack
against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t
have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a
melee weapon attack against the attacking creature."

[rhouck]

There are starting wealth rules by level (or by tier?) in the DMG. I can't check it right now.

Page 38 of the DMG. But starting wealth for levels 1-4 is the same "Normal starting equipment" in the DMG. Talk to your DM if you feel you should get a more.

[Mandragola]

I like that wording. 5e has some pretty loose wording in places and leaves things to interpretation, but still often you find that exploitative stuff has been prevented. It's good.

[HMS Invincible]

OK, so I drop down to chain shirt for 17 ac. Assuming avg gold, 140 is what I get , with criminal background. 10 for shield and 10 for a battle Axe. That ups my damage to 1d8. There doesn't appear to be a difference in most of the weapons anymore.

50 gp for chain shirt.