Barbarian Fighter - Multiclass Guide for Dungeons and Dragons

barbarians are warriors of rage and power who crush their foes while shrugging off lethal injuries fighters are versatile masters of combat who wield superior techniques and countless weapons with highly refined skill put the barbarian class in the fighter class together and you have a warrior of both skill and brutality who wield their rage with precision to direct incredible strength towards their enemies while glancing aside everything that opposes them if you're looking to make a barbarian fighter multi-class character then you should definitely stick around for today's episode both the fighter and the barbarian are very straightforward martial classes whose abilities complement each other seamlessly to create a more powerful character and an extraordinary class combination the barbarian focuses on damage reduction while delivering raw damage output with relatively few attacks the fighter has much more versatility but generally focuses on making numerous attacks with some of the greatest action economy features in the game together they can easily multiply the raw damage of the barbarian with additional fighter attacks the barbarian also has very easy access to advantage on all its attacks through the reckless attack feature and combined with the fighter's ability to improve critical hit chances a barbarian fighter is one of the best critical hit fishers in the game so what are the downsides of this as with any other multi-class option you give up on late game class features and the progression on some of your other features will be a lot slower than a single class character as most of our builds rely on hitting three levels in each class as early as possible this usually means waiting quite a while on that fourth level ability score increase neither the barbarian nor the fighter provide much in the way of role-playing options which isn't a problem if you only care about battle abilities but it's something to consider in this case we also have two classes that both gain the extra attack feature a feature that very specifically does not stack and is wasted for us depending on the split between levels we can also lose out on the straight fighters late game extra ability score increases and the barbarian's later improvements to our critical hits so when does a fighter barbarian really kick in well because both classes are so straightforward you'll see the benefits with even one level in each class there are specific synergies we want to hone in on though most of which kick in once we get to three levels in each class so a total of six class level this is mainly due to synergies between the starting archetype features that we want to exploit this means that the builds typically kick in at level 6 but you shouldn't feel underpowered before they do since the classes mesh so well even without our fun play styles now let's talk about what class features we care about here because there's no single one way to really make the fire barbarian multi-class work there's no one correct answer but very few of both class's features go unused we'll assume you're building up the multi-class for damage output but there are also some interesting skill focus builds to be had here to start off with the barbarian features we have their hit points the difference between a d10 and a d12 hit die isn't extreme but it's enough to be worth considering a higher number of barbarian levels will mean a beefier character and then of course we have rage rage gives additional damage to all of our attacks and gives us damage resistance against all the most common forms of damage and advantage on strength checks normally the downside for multi-classing into barbarian is that you can't cast spells and waste all those spell slots not a problem for our completely martial combination though raging occupies our first turn bonus action which we need to be mindful of but it essentially supercharges everything a melee fighter wants to do anyway this is the primary reason why we want barbarian levels in the first place and since it's a first level feature even a one level dip makes for a decent build and then there's unarmored defense while there is one build that won't care about this most builds can and should take this opportunity to pick up a good ac without worrying about armor at second level unarmored defense rarely gets past 18 at the highest with 14 or 15 as more typical totals but that's still a fine ac for most characters and will beat or match what you could get with light armor or medium armor and then we have danger sense advantage on dexterity saves one of the most common saving throws is an excellent way to ensure that you don't get burnt into a crisp by a passing dragon or you i mean you can think of an infinite amount of ways to make this one work then with reckless attack this gives you an advantage on attack roles at the cost of providing advantage to your enemies attacks against you this will be a key offensive option for a lot of our builds particularly for crit fishing and then we should mention primal path as there are a few options that range from utility options to powerful options but i'd argue there is enough in their initial third level feature to justify the three level dip i'll go into each one in a bit more detail later but for now know that getting up to three levels of barbarian for the primal path is definitely worth doing and then the always fun brutal critical this adds another damage die on a critical hit and improves a total of three times in the late tier barbarian levels at 9th 13th and 17th level it's not necessarily enough motivation to push that far into barbarian per se but for our crit fishing purposes it's a worthwhile payoff and now for these significant fighter features starting with heavy armor proficiency for some of our builds we're trying to maximize ac and that means heavy armor if you go this route make sure that you take your fighter level first as you won't get the proficiency if you start in the barbarian class being a fighter also means you get to choose a fighting style every fighting style is worth considering but for our purposes the defense great weapon fighting and two weapon fighting styles each provide a major boost to our different strategies with the ever popular second wind a once per short rest heal makes our character even harder to bring down it's a massive life saver in the early tiers and even at late tears it can be a saving grace as far as healing abilities go since it goes off a fighter level it'll always be a little less effective in our builds than it is for a straight fighter obviously but it's always useful and then with action surge fighters get to blatantly break the action economy and especially if our hits are hitting hard getting to just attack again can feel downright broken it recharges on a short rest which generally means we get to take a double shot every combat i will go a bit more into detail about what each archetype does for us but the third level features gained from the several martial archetypes are absolutely key for our builds and then we need to take a second to talk about ability score increases because fighters gain plus two additional ability score increases throughout their advancement track which means two additional opportunities to advance our key stats or to additional opportunities to snag feats taking advantage on these though will require only dipping our toes into the barbarian class fighters and barbarians mesh quite easily on ability scores in that we don't care about any of the mental scores and we want to max out our physical abilities you want your strength and constitution as high as humanly possible then your next priority will be dexterity ideally we want all three of these ability scores up to at least 16 and up to 18 or 20 if we can manage it strength is our primary damage stat constitution adds not only to our hit points but also to our ac and dexterity adds to our ac as well but we sadly can't use it as a damage stat alongside rage the mental scores of intelligence wisdom and charisma are going to be mostly useless to us and can be used as dump stats if you're worried about skill checks they and they can be kept at least at neutral tens to prevent negatives and role-play interactions especially if you're worried about social interactions then maybe slightly prioritize charisma but you get the idea there aren't any wrong race options here but if you're looking to optimize the build you want to look for races that provide a bonus to either strength constitution or both there are a few racial traits that can also help us out and they're mostly the same ones you'd want as a barbarian this essentially makes the ideal options the same as if you were making a normal barbarian character all the race options we're tossing up on screen here would surprisingly make great obvious choices from a mechanical perspective and a role-playing perspective which doesn't really happen all that much so that's cool if you guys have any unconventional choices i would absolutely love to hear your ideas down in the comments while you have a lot of flexibility with this multi-class there are a few wrong ways to build them namely by taking any of the fighter archetypes with wizard spells or additional spells we can't cast spells in rage so we need to be picking up purely martial options note we can use magical abilities just not actual spells or anything that would require concentration next it's a better idea to start with a fighter level first for the extra proficiencies you get better choice of skill proficiencies with a wider skill list and heavy armor proficiency both classes have the same saving throw proficiencies so that's not an issue beyond that there are no fully wrong answers from an even split of 10 levels each to a single level of fighter or a single level of barbarian as a dip with that in mind there are some particularly nasty combinations that we can optimize for starting off with the crit fishing slasher the idea here is to create a crit fishing melee warrior by stacking up the odds of landing a critical hit while raging through our enemies with dual scimitars each of which tacking on an additional rage weapon damage bonus we get to add that rage attack damage on every single swing so let's swing an absolute ton with them sadly we also want a feat with the extra attack feature to really put this together so it'll likely be character level 8 when it finally really kicks off you can play around with the order you take these levels in but ultimately for this build we're taking only 3 levels in fighter and 5 levels in barbarian when we reach 8th level with the remaining 12 levels going towards barbarian levels after that the first option we want to take as a fighter is the 2 weapon fighting style to keep our strength modifier in damage to our offhand scimitar then by taking three levels of fighter and taking the champion archetype we gain the improved critical feature fork a crit bonus improving our odds of landing a critical hit from 20s to 19s and 20s from the barbarian levels we want to pick the path of the zealot for our archetype at third level to grab the divine fury feature this feature adds one d6 plus half your barbarian levels to the damage of your first attack each round and notably that damage die would be doubled on a critical hit just like sneak attack damage we're multi-classing here so half of your barbarian level is only minor damage but any damage bump is appreciated here with our fourth barbarian level we pick up the feet slasher slasher is a half feet which means we still get a point of strength or dexterity along with it but it has two features the first reduces the movement speed of creatures we hit with slashing weapons by 10 feet until the end of their next turn it stops them from getting away from you basically the second feature is the one we really care about though whenever we score a critical hit with a slashing weapon our target has disadvantage on all their attack rolls until the start of your next turn so let's put this together we have three attacks one base one with our offhand scimitar and one from the extra attack using reckless attack we can make all these attacks with advantage this means we'll be rolling a total of six chances to score a critical hit and thanks to improved critical we'll be critting on 19 and 20. statistically we have a 47 chance each turn to roll at least one crit racking up that damage at eighth level assuming only a strength of 16 and that at least one attack is a crit we're looking at an average damage of 35 around which jumps to 38 damage around if we crit on our first attack thus doubling the divine fury die and this is all in addition to reducing our target speed and cursing them with disadvantage on their attacks in the next turn which basically makes our reckless attack free if they hit us and totally messes with their turn if they go after your well your buddy or any other ally but here's where it gets even crazier if you can believe this we're a fighter with access to action surge which means when the chips are down we can make five attacks in a round which means 10 whole chances to crit multiple crits on a single turn will pop up somewhat often and every extra crit is a huge benefit on an action surge turn we actually have a 65 chance to crit not to mention all that extra damage our average damage output using action surge becomes 52 damage or 55 damage we if your first hit is the crit and it only gets better in the late levels when you start picking up instances of brutal critical and the increases to rage damage this build starts off a little slow but man it ramps up to insane damage outputs and just keeps increasing as you go along i am sorry dms if this starts to cause trouble at your table and now we have the spooky ghost axe the general idea here is to use the echo knight archetype alongside the path of the ancestral guardian to hit an enemy at a distance using your echo and marking them with the ancestral protectors at a range they can't reach you from thus putting them in a spot where any attacks they can make will be at disadvantage this little combo activates at six character level once we reach the third level archetype in both classes feel free to play around with the order of these levels but by sixth level we should be at three levels fighter and three levels barbarian and our final build should be 11 levels fighter and nine levels barbarian to start with we want to wield a great axe and to take the great weapon fighting style to get the most out of our aforementioned big walloping great acts or any other two-handed weapon that i don't know reflects your world view then with the three levels in each class we gain the manifest echo and unleash incarnation features from the echo knight and the ancestral protectors feature from the path of the ancestral guardian manifest echo gives us a ghost copy of ourselves we can make attacks from and get an additional attack from unleash incarnation and ancestral protectors marks the first target you hit with a melee attack and imposes disadvantage on all their attacks in the next turn unless they target you and here's how it works we keep our echo around normally so that we can save the bonus action for rage and when combat starts we rage and send our echo at a different target and keep our distance from it the echo doesn't make attacks and instead we make the attacks from their position that means that we can make attacks that tag the target with our ancestral protectors and since we are technically on another part of the map they have to either waste their turn dashing to us or are forced to make their attacks at disadvantage this is aided by the barbarians fast movement features since we get to essentially play a game of keep away sending a new spooky ghost with a great axe out every turn to do our dirty work for us the damage output isn't half bad either we're using a big weapon with a low chance of a bad roll thanks to great weapon fighting and thanks to unleash incarnation we can make two attacks with it on most rounds increasing to 3 once we pick up extra attack at the initial kickoff point of 6 level we can expect to hit twice for an average of 23 damage bumping up to 35 damage with an extra attack at level 8 assuming we pump our strength up with our first asi running fighter all the way up to 11th level gets us the extra attack well extra extra attack and barbarian to ninth level picks us up a brutal critical it's important to note though that your echo isn't a creature and doesn't get attacks of opportunity as your opportunity attacks still only come from you and then we have the invincible battle bear the idea here is to take the tried and true totem warrior bear option to gain resistance to practically all damage while in rage alongside the battle master archetype and particularly the bait and switch maneuver to essentially become untouchable we want to be a heavily armored rage machine that shrugs off practically all hits and those that do strike true deal half damage to put this together we want a level spread of three levels of fighter followed by three levels of barbarian the exact order doesn't matter much but it's important to make our first level fighters so that we start with heavy armor proficiency after which the remaining 17 levels should be taken by fighter making barbarian our secondary class and fighter our primary class for a total of 17 levels of fighter and three levels of barbarian to start with we'll be selecting the defense fighting style for an easy plus one ac bonus next we'll be wanting to get up to plate armor as soon as possible along with a shield and a long sword or any other one-handed martial weapon that you like once you hit third level and take the battlemaster archetype select bait and switch as one of your starting maneuvers then with your third barbarian level take the path of the totem warrior archetype and select the bare totem now that your bare totem is giving you resistance to every damage type except for psychic damage you just want to focus on well not getting hit difficult i know here's where it gets a bit tricky though bait and switch is a weird maneuver but essentially so long as you stick within five feet of an ally you'll always be able to roll your superiority die and add it to your ac every turn until you run out of dice hence pushing the fire levels to gain more with plate armor a shield and the defense fighting style we're already sitting at a cool 21 ac but on turns we spend a die to bait and switch we're looking at between 22 ac and 29 ac and we're already resisting all damage you'll have to stick to one of your allies like glue but you'll be able to take on practically all hits and breeze right through it it's all worth noting that the fancy footwork looks like it would be perfect for this build but it only applies while you are moving so it will only really affect attacks of opportunity unfortunately i've covered a lot of multi-class builds on this channel but this is one of the multi-class builds i don't think i really have to sell certain people on all that much i think a lot of people when they start multi-classing kind of immediately think of this build and as it turns out it's almost everything you would dream it would be almost thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it be sure to like and subscribe because we put out new videos like this every week and if there's an interesting build or multi-class build that you guys would like me to cover on this channel please let me know down in the comments thanks again for watching my name is patrick ferguson from skull splitter dice and until next time farewell you

Channel: SkullSplitter Dice

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Keywords: dnd, d&d, dnd5e, dungeons and dragons, 5e, barbarianfighter, barbarianfighter 5e, 5e barbarianfighter, d&d 5e barbarianfighter, d&d barbarianfighter, barbarianfighter d&d, barbarianfighter dnd, dnd 5e barbarianfighter, the barbarianfighter, barbarianfighter 5e stats, barbarianfighter stats 5e, pathfinder barbarianfighter, multiclass

Id: tz7TzMmzM0k

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022