Warlock barbarian build

[keeper2161]

I am going for a bladelock. My character will be a barbarian who doesn't know he is a warlock. He thinks its his spirit totem giving him power.

As he is the last of his tribe no one else can teach him other wise. He ran 25 miles straight to warn his tribe of then impending orc horde, but he was too late. As he stared at the corpses of his fallen tribe, filled with anger. He saw an eagle dive out of the sky and take a fish out of the river. He realized that in nature only the strong survive. Power surged through him and he was filled with a new purpose. Earn glory in battle and prove himself stronger then his clan.

Now I don't know whether to go barbarian 6/ warlock 14 or barbarian 8/ warlock 12 or go barbarian 17/ warlock 3

With warlock 14 I can get the patron feature. With barbarian 8 / warlock 12 I can get another ability score improvement and feral instinct. The feral instinct isn't that good but the score improvement is nice. With barbarian 17 I can get all the nice things of the barbarian and have a very nice unlimited ranged attack (eldritch blast) and have pact of blades. The problem with that is I wouldn't be able to get life drinker.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

The main problem you're going to have is that you can't rage and cast or concentrate on spells at the same time. This can be worked around, especially as a Warlock, since you'll often be casting only 1 spell per encounter. So you can cast then enter rage in the same round.

It's also a super-MAD build. Assuming medium armor, you'll want 14 dex, and as much STR, CHA and CON as you can get. Again, not impossible, but difficult. You'll likely need to forgo feats for the most part.

I think you've found the good breakpoints already. Barb 5 / Warlock 15 might be worth considering as well. The 6th level barbarian totem feature isn't that great, and you gain an 8th level spell and another invocation. You do lose one rage use however.

[Submortimer]

TBH, Warlock 10 is almost worth it JUST to have access to 5th level Armor of Agthys. While I wouldn't tell you to DUMP charsima, if you're mostly planning on being in melee and surviving on your Barb Skillz, it doesn't need to be that high for you to still do some insane damage.

Point to make, a Bear totem/Fiend Patron warlock can be resistant to ALL damage types at level 10. Just saying.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

Using point buy and a standard human you could have a starting array of 16, 14, 14, 14, 12, 9
(not the most popular race, but given the MADness all those +1s are useful.)

Half-elf gives (Ordered by stat): 16, 14, (12 or 13), 8, (10 or 9), 16

Other races are worth considering, but these two give the highest and most flexible stat bonuses.

[keeper2161]

My group doesn't use the point buy system we roll.
My stats are
17 str
15 dex
15 con
12 int
15 wis
17 cha

Took me an 2 hours to roll that.

Also you if your are concentrating on a spell you can cast another spell as long as its not a concentration spell too (I have the PHB just looked up the rule). But I would only use eldritch blast in the first few rounds if the enemies are too far away. I was going to go variant human. Putting the first two points into str and cha. Then choosing warcaster so that I can cast while wielding my weapon.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

My group doesn't use the point buy system we roll.
My stats are
17 str
15 dex
15 con
12 int
15 wis
17 cha

Tool me an 2 hours to roll that.

Huh? how does it take 2 hours to make and record 6 rolls? Unless you're saying you cheated and just kept rolling until you got what you wanted. At that point why bother with the pretense and just take the stats you want? Saves time.

[keeper2161]

We roll 4d6 dice (taking the lowest one out) six times. We can do this as many times as we want. A lot of the times you get a few good rolls and a lot of bad rolls. Once got five 10 and one 11. Another I got two 6s, a 7, two 10s, and a 18. Because this character is MAD I needed really nice rolls. I got plenty of roll that if I was just a barbarian or just a warlock I would have been happy with.

[Mandragola]

You're just supposed to do it once! The whole point in rolling stats is that it's a risk. You're supposed to have some good stats and some bad. it entirely removes the point of you do it that way.

I like your character concept and hope you enjoy it.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

We roll 4d6 dice (taking the lowest one out) six times. We can do this as many times as we want.

Oh I get it. I'm just saying it's pointless from a mechanical point of view. The idea of rolling for stats is: 1) To take a risk (low stats) in hopes of getting a reward (high stats), and 2) To speed up character generation.

The method you described removes all risk, since you can just roll again and again and again. So if you and your DM are rational, you'll agree that you can all save precious hours from your life and just pick the stats you want instead of going through the motions. Otherwise it's just a test in how much free time a person has to toss 4 hunks of plastic around.

[Submortimer]

See, this is why I use a Standard array for every character that runs in one of my games.

18
16
14
12
10
8

With bonuses, your good stats are likely to be quite good, your worst stat is gonna be bad, and in the middle you're doing ok. Keeps people from having stupidly high stats across the board, especially because we have a player that always ends up with "Stats that he rolled really good" when no one was looking.

That being said, how your DM does it is how your DM does it, and i'm not one to complain too loudly.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

With bonuses, your good stats are likely to be quite good, your worst stat is gonna be bad, and in the middle you're doing ok. Keeps people from having stupidly high stats across the board, especially because we have a player that always ends up with "Stats that he rolled really good" when no one was looking.

If someone showed up at my game like that I'd flatly ask him to do his stats over again, either with point buy, standard array or rolling right in front of me and the rest of the players.

[keeper2161]

I made this character in my free time as a back up character. The dm is pretty relaxed about a lot of stuff. I like rolling the character. Puts a lot of randomness into creating a character. Plus to me feels more personal. When you spent 2 hours getting ****ty roll after ****ty roll and just as your about to quit you get the roll you have been looking for, you remember that when you play the character.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

If you insist in actually making the rolls, next time you could program a script to make rolls for you. You could even set it to loop until it returns a specific result. I'd recommend six 18s.

[Easy_Lee]

As others have said, this build is fairly MAD. Could I convince you to consider a similar build? 8 fighter / 12 warlock

This build gets an extra ASI from fighter, meaning 6 in total, meaning you can easily afford your stats and some feats under standard point buy.

By taking the fighter levels first the ASIs, higher hit points, and proficiencies are front-loaded, yielding a hard to kill character from 1-8 (a level range during which warlocks can be very squishy indeed). You also get Con saving throw proficiency by default, meaning that if you take war caster, you will basically never lose concentration. In addition, your armor is good from the start.

Polearms would be the weapon of choice for the build, but this would only start to matter at 20 when you pick up life drinker. Alternatively, dual wield can be fun if you can convince your DM to let you make both weapons your pact weapon, or let you craft / find a double weapon.

The build is also a bit more versatile. You can concentrate on your spells (raging would prevent this), and can action surge if you really need another action. Most fighter and warlock features work off of short rests, so the classes work well together and yield a clean build.

Just my thoughts. I like the idea of what you propose, but it sounds like it would work better with a custom barbarian archetype than a warlock multiclass. The concept seems more like a pure barbarian than a mostly-warlock.

[Rhaegar14]

As others have said, this build is fairly MAD. Could I convince you to consider a similar build? 8 fighter / 12 warlock

This build gets an extra ASI from fighter, meaning 6 in total, meaning you can easily afford your stats and some feats under standard point buy.

By taking the fighter levels first the ASIs, higher hit points, and proficiencies are front-loaded, yielding a hard to kill character from 1-8 (a level range during which warlocks can be very squishy indeed). You also get Con saving throw proficiency by default, meaning that if you take war caster, you will basically never lose concentration. In addition, your armor is good from the start.

Polearms would be the weapon of choice for the build, but this would only start to matter at 20 when you pick up life drinker. Alternatively, dual wield can be fun if you can convince your DM to let you make both weapons your pact weapon, or let you craft / find a double weapon.

The build is also a bit more versatile. You can concentrate on your spells (raging would prevent this), and can action surge if you really need another action. Most fighter and warlock features work off of short rests, so the classes work well together and yield a clean build.

Just my thoughts. I like the idea of what you propose, but it sounds like it would work better with a custom barbarian archetype than a warlock multiclass. The concept seems more like a pure barbarian than a mostly-warlock.

Can I ask why you recommend eight levels if you're gonna do Fighter? To me you're best off taking 2, MAYBE a third if you want a feature from one of the archetypes. When you can pick up Extra Attack from Pact of the Blade anyway, it seems inefficient to take that much Fighter; two levels front-loaded gets you the proficiencies, Fighting Style, and Action Surge, and in my mind the rest is just lost spellcasting ability (but then, I prefer my gish builds casting-heavy). Remember, Pact Magic doesn't really play as nice with multiclassing as the other spellcasting classes, such as Eldritch Knight.

As for Barbarian, I recommend you actually stick to three levels for similar reasons. MAYBE four for the ability score increase, but that will set your casting back further (and in a very hypothetical situation where you eventually get to level 20 it will be the difference between whether or not you eventually have a 9th-level spell). If you go Path of the Berserker, rather than Path of the Totem Warrior, three levels of Barbarian gets you Frenzy, which is enough to keep your daily uses of Rage relevant even without the damage bonus continuing to scale. You can pick up your second attack from the Thirsting Blade invocation, though admittedly a couple levels late (but any multiclassed build is gonna get its extra attack late unless it front-loads whichever class it's gonna get it from). From a fluff standpoint, if he simply believes his pact magic comes from his totem animal, it would make sense for him not to have any totem abilities in my mind.

[Easy_Lee]

Can I ask why you recommend eight levels if you're gonna do Fighter? To me you're best off taking 2, MAYBE a third if you want a feature from one of the archetypes. When you can pick up Extra Attack from Pact of the Blade anyway, it seems inefficient to take that much Fighter; two levels front-loaded gets you the proficiencies, Fighting Style, and Action Surge, and in my mind the rest is just lost spellcasting ability.


Two martial archetype features
No delay on acquiring extra attack, which will save you the invocation for something else.
Three ASIs for eight levels - ASIs are very important for a Gish who realistically needs two maxed stats
If he wants to abuse eldritch knght, picking up warcaster and EB with the EK level 7 featurelets him pull off a polearm or ranged attack plus a full cast of EB in the same round, very high damage
If he went battlemaster, then the maneuvers he picked up would be a useful short rest option for the rest of his character's career

The reason two avoid any two-level dips on a gish is that you lose an ASI. Any dip at all hurts for the same reason. Plus, 12 levels of warlock includes their highest level of casting with only 1 less spell slot per short rest. The higher level warlock features are sometimes useful, sometimes not.

6 fighter / 14 warlock would also be a reasonable spread. It just depends on how many features and ASIs he wants from each side. But if I were going to dip fighter on a warlock, I would only go one level. Otherwise you're losing an ASI, which hurts badly for a standard array character.

[Rhaegar14]

I accept your points as good ones, at least good enough to come down to personal preference; like I said, I like my gishes to be almost as competent at spellcasting as full casters. It's my opinion that, while unfortunate, not being able to get double 20s isn't an insurmountable loss; four ASIs still gets you Warcaster, either Great Weapon or Polearm Master, and double 18s if you start with double 16s. If you play variant human you could get both Weapon Master feats, or add a flavor of Resilient in there.

However, for this specific character, I think you missed the fact that the OP's group rolls ability scores and is allowed infinite rerolls. The MAD issue is a non-factor, because this is the character's ability score array, BEFORE racial adjustments:

17 str
15 dex
15 con
12 int
15 wis
17 cha

With a +1 to Strength and Charisma, and the bonus feat from variant human, he's still getting at least one 20 and all the feats he really needs.

On a somewhat tangential note, there is one argument you made that I consider you to be very wrong about.



The reason two avoid any two-level dips on a gish is that you lose an ASI. Any dip at all hurts for the same reason. Plus, 12 levels of warlock includes their highest level of casting with only 1 less spell slot per short rest.

Emphasis mine. Warlocks get a feature called Mystic Arcanum at levels 11, 13, 15, and 17. Each iteration allows them to choose a single spell of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level respectively and cast it once per long rest. Admittedly they have to pick from a somewhat lackluster spell list, but 12 is still in no way where the Warlock's spellcasting ability caps out.

[Easy_Lee]

Emphasis mine. Warlocks get a feature called Mystic Arcanum at levels 11, 13, 15, and 17. Each iteration allows them to choose a single spell of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level respectively and cast it once per long rest. Admittedly they have to pick from a somewhat lackluster spell list, but 12 is still in no way where the Warlock's spellcasting ability caps out.

Should have been more clear: I meant as far as the warlock's slotted, short rest casting goes, 5th is max. I'm aware of the mystic arcanum, but I'm not a fan of its limitations. Once a day, can never switch the spell for anything else...it just doesn't fit with the rest of the warlock features, to me. Certainly some of those spells could be useful, such as foresight. But I'm not sure how useful compared to the other features of each class, which are always on.

After all, if any situation requires a high-level spell to be cast, there are other classes who are better for it. But just my opinions.

[Yagyujubei]

if youre allowed unlimited rolls your def. selling yourself short here. wait until you cant start with a 20 in your main stat and have at least 16s in your secondaries after racial bonuses.

I would also say that having charisma as your second highest stat is a mistake here. as a blademaster most of your best spells dont actually require a high CHA to be amazing, so you should invest your higher ability numbers in helping you survive in front line combat.

armor of agathys is going to be your main play here, since it isnt concentration so you can cast it and then rage for the rest of the fight. aside from that you'll probably want to pick up utility spells that you can use in out of combat situations.

[Maxilian]

We roll 4d6 dice (taking the lowest one out) six times. We can do this as many times as we want. A lot of the times you get a few good rolls and a lot of bad rolls. Once got five 10 and one 11. Another I got two 6s, a 7, two 10s, and a 18. Because this character is MAD I needed really nice rolls. I got plenty of roll that if I was just a barbarian or just a warlock I would have been happy with.

Well these's a little pointless, that's why i prefer the standar stats, but well... your DM will be the one crying in the ned :smallbiggrin:

OT: Actually i like the idea of the Barbarian/warlock, first think about how will he act, what are his main stats, if he's a bladelock, i guess he will take advantage of his charisma to add it to his damage, so his main 2 stats are going to be STR and CHAR, and i guess... CON, but how is that character going to fight?, you could use your high CHAR to make good use of ilusions (taking the invocation to cast silent image at will) but have in mind that while you're raging you won't be able to cast spells, so the ability to cast spells won't be used much in middle of battle (you could use your spells for RP situations and to start a battle -before using rage-)

[Xetheral]

We roll 4d6 dice (taking the lowest one out) six times. We can do this as many times as we want. A lot of the times you get a few good rolls and a lot of bad rolls. Once got five 10 and one 11. Another I got two 6s, a 7, two 10s, and a 18. Because this character is MAD I needed really nice rolls. I got plenty of roll that if I was just a barbarian or just a warlock I would have been happy with.

Fascinating. At first I was somewhat shocked at that stat generation method, but the more I think about it the more virtues I see.

Frequently a campaign has a uniform power level, but that comes at a cost in verisimilitude and sometimes character uniformity (e.g. everyone having high Con). Some tables roll stats specifically to accommodate these concerns. But rolling once has the drawback of character stats frequently not aligning with player preferences.

Allowing unlimited rolls largely fixes this problem, as players who desire higher stats can get them, but those who are satisfied with lower rolls are encouraged to settle for them by the high cost in boredom they must pay to get higher stats. Thus, assuming a group with varied preferences, the characters turn out with significantly more variation than point-buy encourages. It's a "fair" system because everyone *could* get the high stats if they chose.

Personally I prefer a more balanced game and will cheerfully pay the verisimilitude cost to get it, so I'll be sticking with point buy. But I definitely see the attraction in the OP's method. It's more-or-less the same system used in the Baldur's Gate games, and that too had a certain inexplicable appeal, even if it led to boring hours of rerolling stats.

[Yagyujubei]

Fascinating. At first I was somewhat shocked at that stat generation method, but the more I think about it the more virtues I see.

Frequently a campaign has a uniform power level, but that comes at a cost in verisimilitude and sometimes character uniformity (e.g. everyone having high Con). Some tables roll stats specifically to accommodate these concerns. But rolling once has the drawback of character stats frequently not aligning with player preferences.

Allowing unlimited rolls largely fixes this problem, as players who desire higher stats can get them, but those who are satisfied with lower rolls are encouraged to settle for them by the high cost in boredom they must pay to get higher stats. Thus, assuming a group with varied preferences, the characters turn out with significantly more variation than point-buy encourages. It's a "fair" system because everyone *could* get the high stats if they chose.

Personally I prefer a more balanced game and will cheerfully pay the verisimilitude cost to get it, so I'll be sticking with point buy. But I definitely see the attraction in the OP's method. It's more-or-less the same system used in the Baldur's Gate games, and that too had a certain inexplicable appeal, even if it led to boring hours of rerolling stats.

yeah but the problem there is that literally noone is gonna settle for 11's and 12's when the person next to them just spent an hour to get all 16's and 17's. I don't care what you say to me in theory, when push comes to shove at the table you're gonna look around and want rolls that are as good as everyone else, so as long as one person is rolling, everyone will be.

[Garimeth]

yeah but the problem there is that literally noone is gonna settle for 11's and 12's when the person next to them just spent an hour to get all 16's and 17's. I don't care what you say to me in theory, when push comes to shove at the table you're gonna look around and want rolls that are as good as everyone else, so as long as one person is rolling, everyone will be.

If these die rolls aren't being made around others they are going to just eventually be made up. This is why I've started using point buy in my games also.

[GWJ_DanyBoy]

If these die rolls aren't being made around others they are going to just eventually be made up. This is why I've started using point buy in my games also.

I generally prefer it when everyone sticks to point buy or standard array. I'm in a group right now where I'm playing a bard and I used point buy, whereas everyone else rolled (On their own time, without any witnesses or third-party rolling program) and everyone has as high or higher charisma than I do. And I'm not talking about the Sorcerer or Warlock, I mean the Barbarian and the party Wizard.

[Yagyujubei]

I generally prefer it when everyone sticks to point buy or standard array. I'm in a group right now where I'm playing a bard and I used point buy, whereas everyone else rolled (On their own time, without any witnesses or third-party rolling program) and everyone has as high or higher charisma than I do. And I'm not talking about the Sorcerer or Warlock, I mean the Barbarian and the party Wizard.

in my group we always (we use roll 20) let everyone roll 4d6 x 7 drop lowest roll one time, and if those rolls don't turn out well they can do point buy.

I like it this way because it gives you at least some chance for silly awesome stats, but if it doesn't work out you can still build a really solid character. We def make people roll in front of everyone else or at least the DM though.

[Garimeth]

in my group we always (we use roll 20) let everyone roll 4d6 x 7 drop lowest roll one time, and if those rolls don't turn out well they can do point buy.

I like it this way because it gives you at least some chance for silly awesome stats, but if it doesn't work out you can still build a really solid character. We def make people roll in front of everyone else or at least the DM though.

I did this once, also on roll20, and never again. It defeats the whole point of rolling imo. If point buy isn't strong enough for your game, just give them extra points. I also like another posters suggestion of each player rolling an array, and then everybody gets to choose which array they want to use.

[mephnick]

My group doesn't use the point buy system we roll.
My stats are
17 str
15 dex
15 con
12 int
15 wis
17 cha

Took me an 2 hours to roll that.


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