Barbarian Stat Allocation

[bam88]

Starting up a new campaign soon and have started work on my character. Rolled stats with the DM and got and interesting set but questioning myself as to how I want to allocate them. I will be playing a Bugbear Zealot Barbarian, we are starting off at level 4. I want to be a glaive build for just crazy fun reach and picked PAM for my feat. I ended up rolling 10, 17, 8, 10, 12, 18.

At first my thought was to max out STR and use the 17 in DEX with my added racial that would give me 18 DEX total. My health would be rather low with only 12 CON. I will be fairly front line as other party members are celestial warlock, war cleric, paladin, and gun slinger. However with the super reach I can keep some stuff at bay.

My second thought was to use my 12 for STR and racial would bump that to 14. Keep the 17 in DEX plus racial for 18 DEX, and then put my rolled 18 into CON. This would give me a very nice AC, lot of HP, and really good initiative. Draw back would be lower hit rate and less dps, but maybe the DM will be nice and toss me some gauntlets of ogre power.

I am leaning towards option number 2 for pure survival purposes and then have to rely on magic items or just use up all my ASI to boost STR. Is it really that bad to have that low STR?

[strangebloke]

I don't think this is a good plan.

Your AC will be good-ish, but still not great. It's still "just" an 18, and while that sounds okay, its not really going to be amazing. Then, if you ever use reckless attack, your 18 AC will look more like 14 AC, which isn't good at all. Meanwhile, your to-hit is going to be pathetic.

As a barbarian, you'll have really high HP, resistance to a bunch of things, and other goodies from the zealot tree. I don't think that you want to overspecialize in survivability. If you want decent AC, you can actually get 18 by wearing halfplate and switching to shield and spear over glaive. I'm going to do a quick comparison here to give you an idea of what you're looking at:

Build 1: 20 STR, 13 DEX, 17 CON
spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.55 + (1d6 + 2) = 16.5
reckless spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.79+ (1d6 + 2) = 21.6
glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.55 + (1d6 + 2) = 17.6
reckless glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.79 + (1d6 + 2) = 23.9

spear+shield+halfplate AC: 18
reckless spear+shield+unarmored AC: 14
glaive+halfplate AC: 16
reckless glaive+halfplate effective AC: 12

HP: 45

Build 2: 20 STR, 18 DEX, 13 CON
spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.55 + (1d6 + 2) = 16.5
reckless spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.79+ (1d6 + 2) = 21.6
glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.55 + (1d6 + 2) = 17.6
reckless glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 5 + 2 + 1d4 + 5 + 2) * 0.79 + (1d6 + 2) = 23.9

spear+shield+halfplate AC: 19
reckless spear+shield+unarmored AC: 15
glaive+halfplate AC: 17
reckless glaive+halfplate effective AC: 13

HP: 37

Build 2: 14 STR, 18 DEX, 18 CON
spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 2 + 2 + 1d4 + 2 + 2) * 0.40 + (1d6 + 2) = 11.1
reckless spear DPR vs. AC 17: (1d6 + 2 + 2 + 1d4 + 2 + 2) * 0.64 + (1d6 + 2) = 14.5
glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 2 + 2 + 1d4 + 2 + 2) * 0.40 + (1d6 + 2) = 11.9
reckless glaive DPR vs. AC 17: (1d10 + 2 + 2 + 1d4 + 2 + 2) * 0.64 + (1d6 + 2) = 15.8

spear+shield+unarmored AC: 20
reckless spear+shield+unarmored AC: 16
glaive+unamored AC: 18
reckless glaive+unarmored effective AC: 14

HP: 49

The high con, high dex build deals like half the damage of a barbarian who runs in and goes reckless. Only you can decide how you want to play, but damage = fun as far as I'm concerned when playing a barbarian. Lets be clear, you're only gaining like 2 AC from putting an 18 in DEX. That's not great.

Personally, unless you want to do stealth related stuff, I'd go with the high strength, high con build. If you want to do stealthy stuff, maybe go for the high strength, high dex build. You'll be missing out on a lot of damage otherwise. AC is nice, but remember that Lots of things besides attack rolls can screw you over. I would actually consider putting the 12 into wisdom and leaving a 10 in DEX. AC just really isn't important for barbarians.

[fuzziemanbob]

Starting up a new campaign soon and have started work on my character. Rolled stats with the DM and got and interesting set but questioning myself as to how I want to allocate them. I will be playing a Bugbear Zealot Barbarian, we are starting off at level 4. I want to be a glaive build for just crazy fun reach and picked PAM for my feat. I ended up rolling 10, 17, 8, 10, 12, 18.

At first my thought was to max out STR and use the 17 in DEX with my added racial that would give me 18 DEX total. My health would be rather low with only 12 CON. I will be fairly front line as other party members are celestial warlock, war cleric, paladin, and gun slinger. However with the super reach I can keep some stuff at bay.

My second thought was to use my 12 for STR and racial would bump that to 14. Keep the 17 in DEX plus racial for 18 DEX, and then put my rolled 18 into CON. This would give me a very nice AC, lot of HP, and really good initiative. Draw back would be lower hit rate and less dps, but maybe the DM will be nice and toss me some gauntlets of ogre power.

I am leaning towards option number 2 for pure survival purposes and then have to rely on magic items or just use up all my ASI to boost STR. Is it really that bad to have that low STR?
since you are a barbarian you usualy have high str and con, dex isnt really neaded cause of ur high hp and massive attack. plus the unarmoured defence of the barbarian your ac should be covered so go with 18 str, 17 con, 12 dex, 10 wis, 10 cha, 8 int then with your stat bonus max out your con cause ur str is maxed cause of racal

[fuzziemanbob]

and yes for a barbarian 14 str SUCKS

[chando]

I would say if you want to have good Str and Dex go for it. Dont go for the hevier armors if you dont want to. doesn't matter if you are have sligthy lower HP then usual as a barbarian, you still have resistance most of the time and you are a Zealot, if you ahve tons of HP and AC you wont be using your zealot feature, being able to be brought back costless is grat, even if you lose the last turn of combat every now and then (its not the same as dying everytime, you still have reach+ and half-a-brain to not be in front the tarrasque being mauled to death)

play what you want.
you might have a better time with good Str
Dex and Con both have pros and cons but both add survivability (dex helps with initiative, the unusual ranged attack, and dex saves, you aready have Con proficiency, AC is equal if naked, you can always get more con, or maybe a peripat of health)

[Wildarm]

I'd go for starting stats of 20 STR, 13 DEX, 17 CON
Bump Dex and Con at level 4

Your unarmored AC /w shield will be 18 which is good enough for a barbarian with the amount of HP you'll have. Max con at level 8 - 19AC.

Drop the shield at level 12 and pickup GWM and use a greatsword. You'll have a HUGE HP pool(144 HP) at level 12 so you can afford to drop your AC for a huge damage boost in Tier 3.

[CTurbo]

I agree with 20 Str, 13 Dex, 17 Con and bumping Dex and Con ASAP. That is what I would do.

[bam88]

DM mentioned that as an added bonus we get to add in a base feat from the PHB as a part of character creation. So this means I can get PAM baseline and can use my lvl 4 ASI for some stats. This changes things a fair amount. Will probably go 20 STR, 13 DEX, and 17 CON. Then with my lvl 4 ASI I bump DEX and CON and get the extra HP and AC. For flavor of the character will end up with 10 to WIS and INT and just dump the 8 into CHA.

[stoutstien]

Depending on table, a 10 in wisdom and no Prof in it's ST is asking for trouble

[Pex]

You need high ST and favor CO over DX wearing armor or not. Don't ignore DX, but ST and CO should eventually both be 18 before you consider it. Having a 20 or two can wait until level 12 at least for your first one, though having a 20 earlier is nice and fine. You'll have advantage on DX saves and later initiative. That will make up for treating DX as a tertiary stat.

[strangebloke]

Depending on table, a 10 in wisdom and no Prof in it's ST is asking for trouble

Yeah. Generally I'd say that the stat priority for barbs goes something like

STR > CON = WIS > DEX

With you not really needing more than a 14 in any of them if push comes to shove.