Help me optimize my Barbarian 4/Fighter X

[NotPlumpy]

Hello!

I have come here seeking assistance to further optimize a character, I thought I had already optimized to its utmost potential, but feel
like I have exhausted all available options.
I figured I might get a fresh set of eyes to take a look at my monstrosity before I eventually take it into an actual session.

The core of the build revolves around a homebrew feat provided by my DM, which allows me to automatically crit a prone enemy as long
as I am using a heavy weapon.


- Punisher -
Prerequisites: Strength 15 or higher
Your phenomenal strength has granted you the power to crush foes with your heavy weapons.
When using a weapon with the heavy property against a prone opponent, the attack is automatically critical.
Additionally, the range for critical hits when using heavy weapons is now 19-20. If already 19-20 it is now 18-20.

Naturally, I built a character that has a high chance of knocking enemies prone as well as achieving as much damage as possible from critting.
So, I went with Half-Orc for the additional Crit Die and the Pike as my weapon of choice, so I could pick up the Piercer feat later on for one more Crit Die.
The DM allowed us a Free Feat at Character Creation as well.

This is what it looks like so far:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/869177831589052452/878212762277388298/barb.PNG
The Ability Score Maximizer is another homebrew feat allowed by the DM that allows increasing stats beyond their natural limits.


The idea is, I run Battle Master with Trip Attack to have an easy way of knocking enemies prone without directly consuming an Extra Attack for the Shove Action.
In order to increase my chances of achieving that, I am trying to push my Strength as high as possible.
Ideally I will knock an enemy prone on the first hit and the follow up attacks will all be criticals rolling 3d10+Modifiers, while also being able to use our Bonus Action
to hit them one more time thanks to Great Weapon Master.

The Barbarian exists in this build solely for Totem Warrior and Rage, giving me an immense boost to my survivability in melee.


Strengths of the Build:
High Survivability thanks to Bear Totem Warrior and Half Orc's Relentless Endurance
Reach from the Pike
An Absolute Truckload of Damage from Autocrits

Weaknesses:
Limited to Medium Armor due to Rage
Highly Vulnerable to Spells targeting Wisdom Saves (aka One Spell Away From Killing the Party)

That's where I am at now. For the record: the DM has allowed usage of UA; and all official books, except Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, are physically available at our table.

Other Feats used in this build:

- Piercer -
You have achieved a penetrating precision in combat, granting you the following benefits:
Increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an attack that deals piercing damage, you can reroll one of the attack's damage dice, and you must use the new roll.
When you score a critical hit that deals piercing damage to a creature, you can roll one additional damage die when determining the extra piercing damage the target takes.


- Great Weapon Master -
You've learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits:
On your turn, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action.
Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll.
If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage.


- Ability Score Maximizer -
Increase one Ability Score by 2 regardless if you are already at 20. This feat can be taken any number of times.

[Rukelnikov]

Seems good. If you are trying to optimize the feat, a Hexadin may be even better, Bladelock smite is an auto prone (no save), and the smites dice will get doubled on your auto crits.

[NotPlumpy]

Seems good. If you are trying to optimize the feat, a Hexadin may be even better, Bladelock smite is an auto prone (no save), and the smites dice will get doubled on your auto crits.

That's interesting. The thought never crossed my mind to go with a non-martial.
You are referring to the Eldritch Smite Invocation, correct?

And then, what kind of level spread would you recommend?

[Rukelnikov]

That's interesting. The thought never crossed my mind to go with a non-martial.
You are referring to the Eldritch Smite Invocation, correct?

And then, what kind of level spread would you recommend?

Well, I'd go Pally6/LockX, maybe Pally7 depending on the subclass, probably doing Pally2/Warlock6/Pally6/WarlockX

The problem is levels 5 and 6 you will feel kinda weak since you wouldn't have Extra Attack yet, your build has this same issue btw.

You could also go Pally2/Warlock6/Sorcerer12

More damaging, but less durable since it doesn't have Paladins aura, far more damaging though.

[NotPlumpy]

Well, I'd go Pally6/LockX, maybe pally7 depending on the subclass, probably doing Pally2/Warlock6/Pally6/WarlockX

The problem is levels 5 and 6 you will feel kinda weak since you wouldn't have Extra Attack yet, your build has this same issue btw.

I can see the benefits of Pally 7 due to subclass features, but Eldritch Smite makes at least Warlock 5 a requirement.
The downside, however, is that the Feat in question requires at least 15 Strength. That's arguably not hard to achieve but seeing how the point of a Hexadin
is to circumvent the Paladin's MADness, I feel like having 15 points in Strength are points I could have spent more wisely elsewhere.

Yeah I am aware of the Extra Attack issue at early levels. My solution would have been to go Barb 2/Fighter 5 at our current level but this character
will likely be introduced to our campaign at 8th Level.

[stoutstien]

With those particular house rules in play I would probably ditch barbarian all together. Because you want to use prone as often as possible then the majority of the barbarians chassis is going to waste. Sure rage gets adv on the check but so does a RK and they will reach 3 attacks sooner and have more feats to play with seeing how many you are looking at.

Alternatively just a normal Battle Master could use these rules to leverage GWM even more. Instead of turning a mess into a hit they're going to turn a mess into a crit.

**Critical hits in general aren't that impressive Even with the half orc racial feature. The best part is the gwm bonus attack generation.**

[Rukelnikov]

I can see the benefits of Pally 7 due to subclass features, but Eldritch Smite makes at least Warlock 5 a requirement.
The downside, however, is that the Feat in question requires at least 15 Strength. That's arguably not hard to achieve but seeing how the point of a Hexadin
is to circumvent the Paladin's MADness, I feel like having 15 points in Strength are points I could have spent more wisely elsewhere.

Yeah I am aware of the Extra Attack issue at early levels. My solution would have been to go Barb 2/Fighter 5 at our current level but this character
will likely be introduced to our campaign at 8th Level.

You still want Str 15 for Plate, and in this specific case, you don't even need to go Hexblade tbh, you just want the auto prones and the fuel for smites, you can still go Str based and you'll be fine, its probably even better tbh, since you will alwayshave the option to shove them prone. Consider this, a 1st level slot smite, is an average 18 extra damage on a crit, almost twice that of GWM and you don't need tot ake a -5. GWM has great sinergy with the BA attack though.

It depends on how many rounds of combat you expect to have per day (and per short rest). If you do around 10 rounds of combat per long rest Sorlockadin will be better cause it has far better nova and can buff himself a lot. If you do 10 rounds of combat per short rest Barbarian Fighter may be better depending on how frequently you get to trip enemies prone. I'd go for a no save method, but Trip is still a good choice.


With those particular house rules in play I would probably ditch barbarian all together. Because you want to use prone as often as possible then the majority of the barbarians chassis is going to waste. Sure rage gets adv on the check but so does a RK and they will reach 3 attacks sooner and have more feats to play with seeing how many you are looking at.

Alternatively just a normal Battle Master could use these rules to leverage GWM even more. Instead of turning a mess into a hit they're going to turn a mess into a crit.

**Critical hits in general aren't that impressive Even with the half orc racial feature. The best part is the gwm bonus attack generation.**

Yeah, I second this, 4 levels just for resistance and +2 damage isnt worth it, if your goal is to be attacking prone enemies as much as possible, Reckless Attack will lose a lot of its lustre, and those 4 levels in ftr mean an extra feat and very soon an extra attack.

[RogueJK]

With those particular house rules in play I would probably ditch barbarian all together. Because you want to use prone as often as possible then the majority of the barbarians chassis is going to waste.

Agreed. You don't need the Barbarian levels. Straight Battlemaster is the better plan for the OP's stated goals.


Sure rage gets adv on the check but so does a RK and they will reach 3 attacks sooner and have more feats to play with seeing how many you are looking at.

Rage wouldn't even help with the OP's plan, since he stated that he's going to rely on Battlemaster's Trip Maneuver (which doesn't benefit from Rage's Advantage on STR checks) rather than spending an attack to Shove Prone (which would benefit from Rage's STR Advantage).

But if the OP still want to have Advantaged Shoves to fall back on for times when you don't have any Maneuver Dice left, then consider just a 1 level dip into Barbarian for basic Rage; that'd be a Barbarian 1/Battlemaster Fighter X. Or consider a 1 level dip into Rogue or the Skill Expert Athletics feat for double your Proficiency Bonus to Athletics, which would be a similar boost.



**Critical hits in general aren't that impressive Even with the half orc racial feature. The best part is the gwm bonus attack generation.**

Generally, for Crits to be really impressive, you need a separate source for a decent handful of additional damage dice to be doubled as well. Most often, this comes from either Sneak Attack or Smite.

3d10 is nice, especially on a large number of your attacks thanks to your auto-crit. But being able to bust out 3d10+8d8 instead is certainly impressive, for Nova damage purposes.

However, while Hexadin as suggested is one route to big critical smites, the issue is that while your Crits will be much bigger, you'd be very limited in the number of times that you can do it per day. And you'll also be seriously hampering your ability to repeatedly Prone enemies. For example, if starting at Level 8, that'd look something like:

Hexblade Warlock 5/Conquest or Vengeance Paladin 3 (starting Paladin 1 for Heavy Armor)
STR 15
DEX 10
CON 13+1
INT 8
WIS 12
CHA 14+2
Feats: GWM and Punisher
Invocations: Thirsting Blade, Eldritch Smite

So assuming all your attacks hit, your first Attack in a turn gets an Eldritch Smite for 1d10+3+4d8 and auto-prone (3rd level Eldritch Smite). Your Extra Attack gets an auto-crit for 3d10+3+8d8 (3rd level Divine Smite). Your BA GWM Attack then gets 3d10+3+4d8 (1st level Divine Smite). But then both of your 3rd level Warlock slots are gone until your next short rest, so no subsequent auto-prones are available until then. And you only have 3x 1st level Paladin slots each day for the BA GWM Smite. So you basically get one really impressive round per short rest, but then no further ability to auto-prone, auto-crit, or smite after that.


Therefore, I think Battlemaster's significantly more frequent Trip Maneuvers (4x/5x per short rest), combined with just the 3d10 auto-crits against these more frequent prone enemies (plus eventually 3x/4x attacks per turn from Fighter), wins out over Hexadin's nova potential over the long term. You won't have the impressive spike/nova damage against one enemy in one turn per short rest, but you'll have more reliable crit damage over a much larger number of attacks over the course of the adventuring day.

If the homebrew autocrit feat wasn't in play, the Hexadin route would likely win overall in damage output. But that homebrew feat really begs for frequently repeatable Prones for frequent autocrits, which the Hexadin simply doesn't get.

[Keravath]

The biggest issue I see is that 4 levels of barbarian either causes a massive delay to extra attack or you have to fit them into the build later where it will delay the level 11 extra attack.

I would consider ditching barbarian entirely and then going straight fighter if your goal is make maximum use out of the DMs special feats as early as possible.

[NotPlumpy]

Agreed. You don't need the Barbarian levels. Straight Battlemaster is the better plan for the OP's stated goals.



Rage wouldn't even help with the OP's plan, since he stated that he's going to rely on Battlemaster's Trip Maneuver (which doesn't benefit from Rage's Advantage on STR checks) rather than spending an attack to Shove Prone (which would benefit from Rage's STR Advantage).

But if the OP still want to have Advantaged Shoves to fall back on for times when you don't have any Maneuver Dice left, then consider just a 1 level dip into Barbarian for basic Rage; that'd be a Barbarian 1/Battlemaster Fighter X. Or consider a 1 level dip into Rogue or the Skill Expert Athletics feat for double your Proficiency Bonus to Athletics, which would be a similar boost.



Generally, for Crits to be really impressive, you really need a separate source for a handful of additional dice to be doubled as well. Most often, this comes from either Sneak Attack or Smite.

3d10 is nice, especially on a large number of your attacks thanks to your auto-crit. But being able to bust out 3d10+2d6/4d6/6d6/8d6 is impressive, for Nova damage purposes.

However, while Hexadin as suggested is one route to big critical smites, the issue is that while your Crits will be much bigger, you'd be very limited in the number of times that you can do it per short rest. And you'll also be seriously hampering your ability to Prone enemies. For example, if starting at Level 8, that'd look something like:

Hexblade Warlock 5/Conquest or Vengeance Paladin 3 (starting Paladin 1 for Heavy Armor)
STR 14+1
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 8
WIS 12
CHA 15+2
Feats: GWM and Punisher
Invocations: Thirsting Blade, Eldritch Smite, Agonizing Blast (for ranged EB backup)

So your first hit gets an Eldritch Smite for 1d10+3+4d8 and auto-prone (3rd level Eldritch Smite). Your second hit gets an auto-crit for 3d10+3+8d6 (3rd level Divine Smite). But then both of your 3rd level Warlock slots are spent until your next short rest. So so subsequent auto-prones are available that combat, and the only Smites left are your 3x/long rest 1st level Paladin slots. You get one impressive round per short rest.


Therefore, I think Battlemaster's significantly more frequent Trips (4x/5x per short rest), combined with just the more frequent 3d10 auto-crits on these prone enemies, wins out over Hexadin's nova over the long run. Less impressive spike/nova damage against one enemy, but higher damage over a larger number of enemies over the course of the adventuring day.

I like this. The Eldritch Smite auto-prone combined with the Paladin's Smites on the follow up attack does make for a spectacular round of damage.
Running Hexadin like this didn't cross my mind initially since I was too fixated on Battle Master's Trip Attack but I am glad I made this post now.
I am most likely going to take this suggestion as it's precisely what I was hoping to achieve.
The downside of not having a lot of juice for longer or more encounters a day will not be an issue at our table as our DM does not usually throw more than two encounters at us.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoy this idea for several reasons:
It overall improves on my initial idea but instead of hoping my Trip Attack succeeds, it provides me with an auto-prone.
My lack of ranged fighting capabilities are compensated for by being able to utilize Eldritch Blast.
And my original fear of failing a Wisdom save and turning against my party is severely diminished with Paladin's Wisdom save proficiency.

Indulge me, however, how would you continue this build after 8th level? I am genuinely interested.

[Rukelnikov]

snip

So your first hit gets an Eldritch Smite for 1d10+3+4d8 and auto-prone (3rd level Eldritch Smite). Your second hit gets an auto-crit for 3d10+3+8d6 (3rd level Divine Smite). But then both of your 3rd level Warlock slots are spent until your next short rest. So so subsequent auto-prones are available that combat, and the only Smites left are your 3x/long rest 1st level Paladin slots. You get one impressive round per short rest.

Therefore, I think Battlemaster's significantly more frequent Trips (4x/5x per short rest), combined with just the more frequent 3d10 auto-crits on these prone enemies, wins out over Hexadin's nova over the long run. Less impressive spike/nova damage against one enemy, but higher damage over a larger number of enemies over the course of the adventuring day.

Yeah, I agree. At level 8 you don't have enough sustainability as a smiter if its more than 1 fight per short rest (though I probably would advice against using the warlock slot for the paladin smite), but I think the smiter route gets more from subsequent levels than the Battlemaster in this particular build. How about this:

Vhuman
Pally2/Hexblade5/Whisper5

15
8
15(+1)
8
8
15(+1)

Free : Punisher
Vhum: GWM
Lock4: +2 Cha
Bard4: +2 Cha

Expertise in athletics, "free" Hex concentration for the first encounter, 4/3/3 slots, and Bard smite to boot.

[RogueJK]

Indulge me, however, how would you continue this build after 8th level? I am genuinely interested.

For the straight Hexadin, I'd do Hexblade 5/Paladin 6 for 2nd level Paladin slots and the sweet Aura of Protection, and then go Hexblade X from there for higher level Eldritch Smite slots.

However, if you want to increase your Divine Smiting power specifically, a Hexsorcadin or Hexbardadin would likely be even better. Hexblade 5/Paladin 2/Sorcerer or Bard X. Either way, you've still got your Extra Attack, Eldritch Smite, and Divine Smite from the Hexadin, and are now stacking on additional Spell Slots for additional Divine Smites from your Sorcerer/Bard levels. Of the two, as pointed out in the above post by Rukelnikov, Bard gives you the opportunity for Expertise in Athletics, for a backup plan to Shove Prone with an Attack when you don't have any Eldritch Smite autoprones left.


Either way, for ASIs you'll want to boost CHA to 20, and round out your STR with a half-feat like Piercer (or Skill Expert Athletics if you don't go the Bard route).