Feat or ASI for 4th level BarBearian?

[Coidzor]

I've got until 7pm EST to decide on what to grab here and I'm a bit stumped.

Currently I have 20 str, 14 sex, 16 con, and 13+ in all mental scores. My armor is a suit of half-plate I stripped off of the boss I just killed before we retreated for the long rest that leveled us. My hp for 3rd level was 42.

Started out with a maul, but I kept getting hit a bunch before I could rage, so I took to carrying a shield and dropping it or not based upon the combat we got into and whether I would spend a rage. I now have a greataxe and silver battleaxe in addition to my starting maul, handaxes, and quarterstaff from my equipment picks/background.

About half the time I've sword and boarded and the other half I've two-handed it since I got a shield off a dead hobo.

I went with bear totem for the unkillability when raging. Also because I like bears.

My party consists of a blast-happy wizard(possible evoker) who sometimes tries to bash enemies with his dorf hammer, a cleric who alternates between bless, spiritual weapon(?), and mixing it up in melee, a rogue who likes to hide+snipe but also TWFs with a rapier sometimes, and a sword and board Eldritch Knight Fighter.

Rogue is considering Alertness, iirc, wizard and cleric I think are buffing their casting stats, and Fighter is considering Sentinel or Shield Master.

So far I'm in a tossup between sword and boarding it from here on with shield master, committing to great weapon mastery now that I have half-plate for a decent AC when without a shield, giving grappling a try with Tavern Brawler so I can grab two guys and trip them and then possibly use them as weapons or at least kick(probably headbutt) them/their non-gimped friends, or grabbing mage slayer since an enemy wizard/warlock tag team boss fight almost TPK'd us this past figfht.

Or passing the buck and pumping Con to 18 for Most HP.

Tl;Dr: How to choose between settling on a fighting style, giving spellcasters a bad day, or boosting my con to 20 before mucking with feats?

[Gwendol]

Sentinel or lucky would be my recommendation, before an ASI. Your scores are great already.

Sorry, missed the part about keeping the shield: in that case yes, shield master is great.

[KorvinStarmast]

Currently I have 20 str, 14 sex, 16 con, and 13+ in all mental scores. My armor is a suit of half-plate I stripped off of the boss I just killed before we retreated for the long rest that leveled us. My hp for 3rd level was 42.

I'd add +2 to sex. I mean, wouldn't anyone?
(Fun with typos) :smallbiggrin:

[Lollerabe]

Had to register to just to chime in (Hey guys :) )

With your stats I would say go GWM - no questions.

At the moment your sitting at + 7 to hit without bless and dealing 2d6 + 7 damg while raging.

So you are more or less never missing an attack id imagine.

With GWM you can hit for 2d6 + 17 damg when taking the penalty to hit, not only that but whenever you drop someone, you make another attack as a bonus action.

Now in your case with those stats (wow btw) and the bear path, you can more or less always chose to attack recklessly meaning the GWM penalty will rarely bite you in the rear.

Few things to keep in mind, if you are a half orc I would suggest switching to a greataxe due to savage attacks, if not do it at lvl 9 when you get brutal critical since it only adds +1d6 with maul/greatsword.

When brutal crit comes into play use reckless attacks as often as possible, since criting with GWM really ups your dpr. Depending on your wisdom score id also suggest taking resilient (wis) at lvl 8 so you dont get mindcontrolled and TPK your table :)

[endur]

I chose lucky and GWM.

[DireSickFish]

GWM or the feat that gives you 2hp/lvl if you want to stay versatile. Granted the extra attack from GMW works if you're using sword and board or a heavy weapon so keep that in mind. Only rush Max Con if you also plan on maxing dex and going shirtless ragemonster.

[Vogonjeltz]

Tl;Dr: How to choose between settling on a fighting style, giving spellcasters a bad day, or boosting my con to 20 before mucking with feats?

Rage giving advantage on strength checks makes the Barbarian a pretty good grappler, you'd be missing out on that if you go with shield master. I'd pick tavern brawler or grappler and focus on grabbing opponents to hit them with the battleaxe one handed. The fighter can then shield bash them to the ground giving all of you advantage on your attacks until they can break free from your grapple...which probably won't happen.

[DireSickFish]

Rage giving advantage on strength checks makes the Barbarian a pretty good grappler, you'd be missing out on that if you go with shield master. I'd pick tavern brawler or grappler and focus on grabbing opponents to hit them with the battleaxe one handed. The fighter can then shield bash them to the ground giving all of you advantage on your attacks until they can break free from your grapple...which probably won't happen.

Don't take grapple feat if you plan on grappling. They never fixed the wording on larger sized targets so that part doesn't actually do anything, and pin is worse than what you can do with grappling already. You can shove them prone and have them grappled so they can't get up (because they have 0 ft of movement) and you have advantage to attack them in melee (because they are prone) and they have disadvantage on there attacks (melee from being shoved prone and ranged because an enemy is within 5ft of them).

Pinning puts you in a disadvantageous position as well as them.

[ZenBear]

Your stats are godly enough already, you don't need to pump CON yet.

I say take Mage Slayer. It's a good Feat that no one else in the party has yet, it makes sense IC since you recently had a bad experience with spellcasters, and it doesn't lock you into a certain weapon choice.

On that note, you should keep the shield and battle axe for versatility; shield for AC, two-hand it for d10 damage dice (better crit than gsword/maul, worse than gaxe), empty off-hand to grapple/everything else an open hand is useful for.

[Coidzor]

Rage giving advantage on strength checks makes the Barbarian a pretty good grappler, you'd be missing out on that if you go with shield master. I'd pick tavern brawler or grappler and focus on grabbing opponents to hit them with the battleaxe one handed. The fighter can then shield bash them to the ground giving all of you advantage on your attacks until they can break free from your grapple...which probably won't happen.

Yeah, I kinda wanna try it out to see, but I'm not sure if I want to invest a feat in it just yet since I haven't grappled at all yet, since I didn't discover the grapple+shove combo until I started looking into what to do with my feat.


I'd add +2 to sex. I mean, wouldn't anyone?
(Fun with typos) :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, tablet posts are fun like that. :smallredface:


GWM or the feat that gives you 2hp/lvl if you want to stay versatile. Granted the extra attack from GMW works if you're using sword and board or a heavy weapon so keep that in mind. Only rush Max Con if you also plan on maxing dex and going shirtless ragemonster.

That was my original plan, actually, but then I had half-plate dropped into my lap and I couldn't just turn that down, since IIRC I'd have to use 2 ASIs to equal what half-plate does for me, and I still can't figure out if I might encounter magic armor between level 8 and 12.


Don't take grapple feat if you plan on grappling. They never fixed the wording on larger sized targets so that part doesn't actually do anything, and pin is worse than what you can do with grappling already. You can shove them prone and have them grappled so they can't get up (because they have 0 ft of movement) and you have advantage to attack them in melee (because they are prone) and they have disadvantage on there attacks (melee from being shoved prone and ranged because an enemy is within 5ft of them).

Pinning puts you in a disadvantageous position as well as them.

Yeah, definitely not gonna take the grappler feat unless they errata it. :smallsigh: Seems so silly right now.

Unless the DM is re-writing it favorably, and I forgot to sit the DM down and talk to them about it. :smallredface::smallredface:


Your stats are godly enough already, you don't need to pump CON yet.

I say take Mage Slayer. It's a good Feat that no one else in the party has yet, it makes sense IC since you recently had a bad experience with spellcasters, and it doesn't lock you into a certain weapon choice.

On that note, you should keep the shield and battle axe for versatility; shield for AC, two-hand it for d10 damage dice (better crit than gsword/maul, worse than gaxe), empty off-hand to grapple/everything else an open hand is useful for.

Yeah, if it weren't for the IC reason it probably wouldn't have even made the list, but after fighting our first two spellcasters at the same time... I'm tempted. OTOH, this was our first spellcaster fight. Partially because we didn't murder an earlier Thayan necromancer we encountered because he wasn't graverobbing after all when we tried using our words.