Fighter Multiclass Tier Ranking in D&D 5e

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live life and now under this week's episode greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes Welcome to our Channel where we cover everything DND including advice for players and guides for GMS we upload new videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays so please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode today we are continuing our multi-class tier ranking series and looking at the fighter combinations in Dungeons and Dragons 5e we're going to be ranking the multi-classing combinations of the fighter with every other class in the game if you want to see the system that we're using to rank these multi-class combinations you can check out our initial video where we explain that all right up over there but generally we're just looking at two multi-class combinations and for the purposes of this video The Fighter is going to be the one that we're looking at as being majority of the levels that we take as opposed to other videos where maybe a dip into fighter was worthwhile in this one the fighter is front and center and we're going to talk about how it lends itself to picking up a few other levels from the other classes we try to consider all all the different possibilities in combat exploration and social interaction as we evaluate these multi-class combinations as well to determine which ones bring us ahead of what you would get from just sticking with a single class Fighter the whole way through and though it should go without saying this is our opinion and Kelly and I have lots of biases which is why we ask our community to give their opinions on what they thought the top multi-class combinations were and we'll be going through those at the end of the episode there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so let's kick things off with the artificer the artificer already feels like a bit of a combatant so does it lend itself to being a good pickup for a fighter when I think of the fighter artificer I also Imagine characters like the Lord of blades from the eberron campaign setting that warforged warlord that is really great at tinkering with their own body and is also a very superlative martial combatant and so I think that this is an archetype that feels really really fun on the flip side I think that there's a lot of ways to realize that archetype by just being a single classed artificer and that is the thing is the artificer is already geared towards this engineer combatant they're not just a mechanic otherwise they wouldn't be a playable character in d d so you already have them building guns and weapons and magic items and all of that sort of a thing now if we take say six levels of fighter and we have our multi-attack our great foundation of the fighter build with a few Feats to boot does picking up a few artificial levels I mean we get maybe a few infusions that we can use to deck ourselves out we could have an okay intelligence score but the thing is that your intelligence score for those first few levels of being a fighter you're not going to go all in on intelligence knowing that you're going to take an artifice sir well what you could plan ahead for is you could go into that as an Eldritch Knight if we could actually imagine a character that was for example a fighter 6 artificer four that character is the equivalent of a fourth level spell Caster overall so they have second level spell slots which is just a little bit behind what you would have if you were a single class artificer but a little bit ahead of what you might have if you were a single class Eldritch Knight you just wouldn't actually have true second level spells to use with those slots yet I think that there are options here and it's not the worst thing in the world but at the same time I don't think that picking up levels of artificer are going to get you more ahead than just staying a single class fighter I don't think it's bad I think that there's certain combinations that you could build with your selection of your fighter subclass your artifice or subclass and your spell selection as well as your infusions but I do think that it's going to be it's going to feel like a bit of a slow start and in both cases the artificer feels like a class that we really want to get three to five levels under our belt for and the fighter is also a class that we want to get five to six levels under our belt to get extra attack that extra feat all of our Maneuvers all of our other features that we're getting from from the class so to me this feels like a potentially very potent combination but one's going to take a little while to find its legs because the biggest thing I don't think I would want to do is slow down when I get extra attack with this so I'd want to get beeline extra attack and then at that point it feels like it's really building up slowly I feel like this is maybe a c tier combination again not the worst there are a couple builds what I actually love that makes for me c tier implies that there's some great role play that you won't fall too far behind the rest of the table the great role play options are I think combining like a room night with an artificer or even an Arcane Archer and an artillerus I'm a little more optimistic than you I think that it's a b okay um I think that there are combinations here that could work I just don't think that they're necessarily better than a single class artificer in particular and I don't and I think that the benefits that you get from the artificial levels really feel like they take too long to start happening in the case of the fighter I mean I agree on all of those accounts but we can we can differ on it I I I just feel like I would rather play a straight artificer or fighter than than I would find them I would too yeah um as we move on to Barbarian I think that this is a really good combination I mean Fighters what we're going to see through this whole video is picking up five to six levels of fighter lays down an incredible martial Foundation when you combine this with the other Marshall classes you're just adding to that Foundation Beyond level six Fighters get cool stuff but really they're just pumping up the existing numbers usually precisely and so with the fighter and the Barbarian The Barbarians very front loaded in its features as well you're getting rage Reckless attack in your subclass in your first couple of levels and by that point you're here for everything you need the Barbarian so I personally feel that this is a great dip and one that is very very strong at lower levels of play we talked about this in our Barbarian ranking but Barbarian Five Fighter 3 or Fighter 5 Barbarian 3 both of them are strong right at The Sweet Spot of DnD 5e which is coming in around 8th and 9th level and I think that this for me is what makes it such an s-tier multi-class is that it feels like every level you are getting something amazing that is adding to your character's power it's like you went through those first five levels of fighter to get extra attack maybe you took the sixth level and you got the feet sooner and then Barbarian there's your rage then Reckless attack at Barbarian two then the subclass with its features of Barbarian 3 and at that point if you want to pop back over to fighter and get the third attack in there you're great I don't actually think taking more than three levels of Barbarian is worthwhile I do I think it's just three and you're done I I think that this is also s tier I agree with you and I think that there's this beautiful thing that as you're leveling up after you've grabbed your few levels of fighter to start you've grabbed maybe one or two levels of Barbarian you could actually pull up both character sheets and and start looking at like what do I gain at each level up and if you have like a fighter level that you're like oh that's not very good maybe and the Barbarian offers you something cool for that specific subclass that you picked you could just pick and choose and you're gonna have fun the whole way yeah totally it's very very strong as befits especially for any sort of melee combatant I think that you could even go Barbarian for just to scoop that feat really really early and that feels pretty strong that's really strong actually and I do mean like depending on the subclass you pick um you can also just grab like the bare totem Barbarian and now you're a fighter who takes so tough and even though you have to give up your heavy armor to rage it really doesn't matter with the damage reduction that's being applied and you're still going to have a really strong AC you've got your fighting styles in there you've got plenty of feet slots to take from the ability scores just match perfectly they want the they want strength and Constitution and It ultimately the the entire package just intuitively works like it is like a peanut butter jelly sandwich right yeah just the the sandwich is improved by the peanut butter sandwich is measurably improved by the addition of jam yeah yeah so so what's a jam sandwich you need peanut butter in there yeah so there you go this is your peanut butter and jam sandwich Perfection everybody knows that it's the perfect sandwich don't argue with me unless you're allergic to peanuts but yeah or alternatively the fighter in the Barbarian is like adding bacon to a grilled cheese sandwich okay in fact I'm just gonna put this out there I think the fighter is the bacon of DnD classes because most things are made better by adding things yes yes base and you can add a little bacon or you can make the bacon the focus of the dish you know and it both works like it's like you can put bacon in a salad you can put bacon on Pizza you can wrap scallops and bacon you can cook things in Bacon Fat I love to cook brussels sprouts in the oven but you know what makes them way better bacon bacon and cheese you have bacon and some shredded parmesan on top oh yeah now they're amazing totally uh so yes bacon makes even something like brussels sprouts that is very appalling to many people uh add bacon and parmesan cheese and it's way better so if you take the worst classes in DND that are brussels sprouts cabbage is also really good have you ever had bacon it's actually like real like you you shred the cabbage and you mix the bacon in there and then you can fry it with it have it with a pork chop oh salt yeah um moving on to the Bard uh so now we're not really looking at like the bacon grilled cheese we're looking at adding bacon to Cabbage I mean bards are amazing but do they gain enough out of does a fighter gain enough out of taking Bard Fighters generally are not investing in their Charisma I'd say generally you do have the option to make it a third tier stat for you but and you do get spell casting and I I will say that there are a couple maybe three barred subclasses that the fighter looks really appealing to but this is also one of the interesting things about the fighter is that you don't have to play a strength based fighter you can pivot to a dexterity based fighter instead and dexterity is a much more palpable secondary statistic for many casters so we can very easily make The Bard and the fighter work by simply focusing on our dexterity focusing on other ranged weapons or finesse weapons like the Rapier and that's where scimitars rapiers swords barred all that can work really really nicely together however I think that this is one of those cases and I think we discussed this with our Bard episode where the fighter dip is stronger than the Bard Fighter combo yeah if you're playing mainly a fighter and you're dipping into Bard you're gaining a few spells maybe you're an Eldritch Knight but even then this feels kind of weird you gain like your bardic inspiration is kind of neat but if you're setting out to play a bard especially a swords barred Valor Bard or Whispers Bard and you decide hey let's grab a few levels of fighter for Action surge second win all of those martial weapon proficiencies you can make a really compelling swords bar to Valor Bard but the other way around if you're playing a fighter and you're thinking I'm gonna grab a few levels of Bard I don't think you get enough from a few levels apart It's tricky because particularly with the swords board combination the swordsbard's blade flourishes are reliant on your uses of bardic inspiration and your number of barter conservation uses is determined by your charisma modifier and bards don't get their bardic inspiration uses coming back on a short rest until fifth level so what that means is that with the fighter Bard you do need a pretty hefty commitment to both your charisma score as well as The Bard class as a whole so if we're then looking at something that's like an 11 level character that is Fighter 5 Bard five what we've gained out of that are now we finally have the blade flourishes at a pretty strong state where we can reliably be using them over and over and over again in every combat so you're already moving towards the end game exactly you're already at 11th level and so we might have had other ways to boost our AC that high and fundamentally at that point as well you're an 11 level character and you've got access to third level spells and if spells were what you wanted you could have been in Eldritch Knight all along and we'd also be coming up on our access to third level spells as well here too maybe you really wanted to play an instrument I think for myself I could give it a B I could see it working I just think it it's once again like the artificer it comes online quite late and on our way to get there we've got a couple pain points I I I was also going to give this a b because I do think swords barred lends some cool abilities over to the fighter uh Valor Whispers you could play around with some ideas here and there are martial combatant style bars I don't think we're gaining a lot I think there's a few builds and I think this is more geared towards a hey do you guys want to play a level 10 to 20 campaign yeah and I think at that point it does get a lot stronger I do think that overall the swords bar that takes two levels of fighter is the stronger way to go here and I would rank that more highly on the barred side of things than I would the fighter side next up we come to the cleric so this one's interesting to me because I mean we already have paladins but we talked about this as well in our cleric video that a cleric taking some levels of fighter kind of gets you an alternative Paladin that feels oddly different yep and I think starting it as a fighter is really strong and I think that it feels very strong because again let's just say for the sake of argument we have just for this whole episode you take five five or six levels of fighter and then you're gonna take five or six levels of cleric after that this is another one of those cases where it feels like every level you're taking of cleric you're getting something that if you can compare it to what you would have gotten as the fighter it's like wow this is good that first level of cleric is a huge power boost from whatever you're getting is your domain powers or your channel Divinity whether you want to go with the war domain to attack with your get those extra attacks with your wisdom whether you want to be a forged domain cleric whether you want to be a Twilight cleric or a peace cleric whatever domain you choose is going to add a huge layer of power and then every cleric level after that when we get those spell levels it's like wow this is a really useful upgrade that just Builds on top of what I want to be doing as a fighter because we can buff ourselves up with our cleric spells and then just keep swinging I also think that we don't need too many levels of cleric the the thing with taking spell casters on the fighter is oftentimes you're missing out on a lot of the higher level spells but with a cleric I don't actually want the higher level spells what I'm here for is enough levels of cleric to get spiritual weapon and spirit guidance and those are two spells that really complement the Fighter's modus operandi because you can get both of those spells going and then just continue Swinging with your sword or your weapon and you're right in the thick of it anyways you've got good AC because you've got heavy armor you've got the hit points to support it you're way less squishy than many other clerics would be and so that the fact that Spirit Guardians is only a 15 foot radius that's where you want to be anyways I think it's very strong I think it really Rivals the Barbarian it just gives us a different skill set and it requires a little bit of slightly different building because with this clear build in particular we will want to invest in our wisdom as a tertiary ability score but that's not necessarily a bad thing I think a lot of players that build their Fighters usually look at strength Constitution and they're like I want to have one good mental ability score so they go for the wisdom so it's easy to jump in there one of the other interesting things that we can do is we don't need to be a Battle Master we could be an Elders Knight and even though we're ignoring our intelligence the point of doing that is so that we count our fighter levels as a third towards our cleric spell casting so we're more able to upcast spiritual weapons and spirit Guardians I think this is a surprising a for me I think it's borderline S I think it's very very strong and I would very be I'd be very happy giving in an S tier especially depending on which cleric domain you go with and what fighting style you opt for I think that something like a forged domain peace domain maybe Twilight domain multi-class with this really really strong and really effective your spell selection can be very paired down and I don't think that the ability score split is that difficult to manage because I think that even with a 16 wisdom you're fine for Spirit Guardians and spiritual weapon so you said borderline s are you giving it s or a you know I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm going to say that it is s tier but I want to place it below the Barbarian okay next we come to the Druid and this is always interesting to me how different Druid and clerics are when we actually get into these multi-classing potentials because on paper I see them as similar types of character yeah but one's holy in one's nature they're both support they both are full casters but Druid very specifically has always felt like a class that benefits from more Druid more than most Druid feels one of the hardest to multi-class because you just want more Druid stuff you you do and many of the Druid spells that are amazing demand your action to control them or use them yes you can drop moon beam or wall of fire but call lightning is going to demand your action and wild shape scales with your Druid levels so if we're going for the moon Grid it's a bit of a difficult thing once again we're going to focus on our fighter levels here so it's not like we're gonna just dip two levels of fighter and go Moon Druid for the rest of the way and I think that that's just not as good as dipping Barbarian for the moon druid now we could do something interesting as a sports druid right the sports Druid does have some interesting plays here but that's one subclass of The Druids okay what about this what if we take go with me on this what if we use a Quarter Staff casually focus on our wisdom score as our weapon and we can still take pull our Master with with the Quarter Staff I'm not giving this a d tier you make some good points I think it's c yeah I think I think even if you did that I don't think it would be Stellar well you're grabbing the you're there's like one or two builds that are going to work at the table but aren't going to be as good as the person who came with an optimized Moon Druid yeah or or the Battle Master fighter it's cool it's cool it works it but I don't think it works particularly well see yeah I'll go and see next we come to the Monk and I I feel like uh okay are you gaining anything by taking monk levels okay so I'm gonna just disclose my personal how I would fix the fighter and the monk in d5e take all their class features and slam them together because in theory and I would rename key Point stamina um I think that that would be a really cool way of solving a lot of the problems with both those classes especially compared to casters and obviously you'd have to do some flavoring things but that aside The Fighter taking levels of Monk could be interesting we have to give up our armor to do this but now if we go with monk weapons or we take kensai we can have a bunch of extra monk attacks with our weapons and our unarmed strikes and eventually gets a stunning strike and so a Fighter 5 monk five doesn't look too bad on paper to me I think that it's just it just feels a little diluted because I feel like I a fighter with the monks with more key points than that would be super cool like in theory no no joke stunning strike is any melee weapon attack it doesn't say anything in the description of stunning strike that you have to be wielding a monk weapon it doesn't say anything in the description it's got it stunning strike that you can't be wearing heavy armor so if you just said I don't care about the monk training I'm just here to take five levels a month for stunning strike that's a big investment for one ability though but is it worth it well is taking five levels of Monk worth it compared to the five levels of fighter you would have gotten it let's say you're a Battle Master you could have gotten more Maneuvers and up to your damage style yeah you wouldn't have been able to stun people yeah but I would have been able to grab more Maneuvers and disarm them and trip them and push them okay but if we now give up the armor we give up the heavy weapons we maybe focus on using a long sword or short swords we go with the dexterity based build Dex dexterity wisdom monk likes that the Fighter's fine with having dexterity and wisdom action surge Second Wind extra attack I think here if if you're honestly coming down to it this is one of those cases where the monk is getting more out of it than the fighter is that's what I mean though is yeah if I were a fighter player and we're like oh let's like if I'm a monk I think when we get to the monk the monk loves oh yeah yeah the fighter is already a really strong bass line and the monk actually I'm a monk Fanboy I love monks but if I was playing a fighter I don't think Monk's the one I would pick to multi-class into I I also feel oddly like in these multi-class videos we've often switched the role of me being The Optimist I feel like I'm not I'm not big on a lot of multi-classes that you're like no there's potential so I think I'm giving this a c I think you're right with a caveat being that it's probably s tier for the monk to multi-classes yeah but we'll talk about that in our monk video where everything's asked here because you're not playing a monk okay okay moving right along the Paladin I do think that uh this is good I think that we gain a lot here so once again let's just go back to the the arguments that we had about the cleric and The Bard and then look at what what the Paladin brings us the fighter being the bacon will pair well with a lot of different things because as long as the fighter has strength or dexterity they're happy paladins already are a class that wants to have a good strength a good Constitution and a good Charisma so you're not really taking on any ability score issues that you wouldn't have if you were a single class Paladin anyway that's true right so what we can just build our ability scores as if we were playing a single class Paladin but we've got that Charisma score that's not doing us anything but it's not really bringing us down much for a couple first couple fighter levels we go into Paladin and now immediately we're getting another fighting style we're getting Divine Smite and we're getting more spell thoughts and this is again we can do that same strategy that we did with some of the other classes where we're taking Eldritch Knight not for the elders night spell casting but just so that our fighter levels contribute a little bit to our paladin spell casting giving us higher level spell slots and more of them to convert into smites we cast bless on ourselves and roll into battle okay um I see where you're going with that and I actually yeah uh you don't run into any problems where if you're multi-classing Paladin the question is always do I have to focus on a fourth stat increase but Fighters already overlapping with Paladin for your ability scores yeah uh you're already wanting armor and weapons so yeah I I do see this is this has a lot of potential like I think literally if you wanted to okay let me just let me just put this on the table imagine if Jill with Rudy just took two levels of Paladin yeah yeah that sells me that would be terrifying yeah yeah because then all those Eldritch night spell slots all of them immediately become smites also action search smites yes you could you could just nuke so hard yes this is really good the okay paladins are already the biggest nuke potential in the game single turn damage off the charts so we're a level 11 Eldritch Knight with a few two three little levels two levels of Paladin you can attack six times and you have enough spouse lots to put a Smite on every single one of those attacks yes um by Demon Lord I don't know what lives through that no it's like especially like your end game bosses are usually demonic in nature the whole purpose is taking two levels of Paladin to convert them into the elders night slots so here's my analysis of it I think the elders Knight Paladin is asked here yeah but I think that that that to me is the standout option I think that if you're not an Eldritch Knight I think that it's a much harder cell and probably a I think I'll go a overall yeah um it's not the strongest there's there's one Avenue here that makes it incredible and I'm picturing now Eldritch Knight Vengeance or Eldridge Knight Conquest is brilliant I don't even think I'm gonna take that third level to get the subclass I I don't even think I would go I would just sneak in the two levels of Paladin for the smites okay fair enough yeah yeah um it would be very tempting maybe with certain other fighter builds to go to Paladin 6 to get the aura but the interesting thing about that too is that again you'd only need to have a Charisma of 13 to multi-class into Paladin and that's not too bad of an investment I've seen Paladin I've seen fighter players take Charisma 13 because they wanted their fighter to be intimidating or something like that just to have a little bit of a positive Charisma modifier so I I think it's a pretty easy dip and it's it's a measurable power increase if you're not an Eldridge Knight though it's definitely only it's it's worse but yeah for me a with s tier to the elders night Palawan next up we come to the Ranger and this is one that I personally I mean we've talked about a lot of really good options so I won't say this is the most powerful one in my head but I've played this and it's sick I it is it is it is really really gross I so the thing that I like about this combination right off the bat ranger does something very special for us Ranger's already kind of a fighter with a little bit of spell casting and they're more nature bound but the ranger offers a lot outside of combat they have a lot of utility spells they have a lot of exploration mechanics built into them so you can take your fighter who's really good in combat add some additional combat abilities like the ability to have a favorite enemy and use a Hunter's Mark or be an invisible Gloom stalker who was making six attacks eight attacks with great ambusher on the first turret of combat yes yeah so all Rangers have these little benefits I but if we to go jump right to gloomstock or gloomstalker dials it up to I'm gonna say this is another s tier I think the the gloomstalker Battle Master is unequivocally s tier as as a especially gloomstalker Battle Master crossbow expert Sharpshooter that recipe right there if you've never had that character in your party as a DM that is an encounter warping character yeah now same as the Paladin though that unequivocally that's the S tier but is the rest of the combo and S tier I think for Archer builds or potentially even two weapon fighting builds I think that there's a lot more that you can do here yeah I think that there's I do think the Archer gloomstalker really overshadows everything and so I think very quickly as soon as you start stepping outside of archers and as soon as you start stepping outside of the gloomstalker in particular I think you very quickly drop off the benefits yeah but I mean if we're planning this multi-class then we're I mean an Archer fighter is already amazing they're they're very very powerful so I think at least it's still an a yeah yeah do you think it's overall a full s or do you think it's a with the like the Paladin a with the caveat once again okay because when we're coming back to the other things that we've potentially given the S tier two the Barbarian it really doesn't matter what two subclasses you took there that's why it's s tier the cleric it also doesn't really matter what subclasses you took there the base features are always going to mix well and that's why for me it's it's very very good I actually do think that both the gloomstalker fighter and the Paladin Elders Knight might be stronger than the cleric but those are those are one specific combos within the overall uh Arch so I think I'm pretty confident in giving the ranger an a with again the Asterix on there's an S tier combo here yeah yeah the Rogue also feels like a great combination for a fighter for the for the many of the same reasons and especially for the Archer we're just gaining different types of utility here we're getting a little bit of extra damage with sneak attack but we're gaining amazing Mobility with cutting action and all the skill goodness as well I I actually love the fact that like sometimes you're playing a fighter and you get all the goods of being a fighter but you're like I wish I could be more stealthy and you have the Rogue in that and you just get this sort of Suite of awesome skills and abilities oh yeah and it just it's very useful if if you're going for a certain character who's not fully a rogue but you want more combatant capabilities not to talk about trifectas but Assassin Rogue so three levels of rogue three levels of Ranger to get the Gloom stock I knew you were gonna I was gonna slice through the five levels of fighter so we're not doing three we're not doing three-way multi-classes but I've definitely built I build this one a lot in my spare time just if I'm going on DND Beyond to have some fun and I'm like let's see what happens if I build a Gloom stalker assassin Battle Master and then you get surprised with your expertise and stealth and the fact that you're naturally invisible all the time to creatures in darkness I have a sheet on my computer like a note somewhere calculating the maximum amount of damage I'd be able to do in a single turn at like level 10 and it's uh it's fun can I also point out though on the flip side fighter Paladin Barbarian okay where yes we're we're jumping out of the scope of these videos but if you are looking for a three-way combo the Fighter's a great place to jump into two different options to potentially the strongest like three maybe we should side note pin for future dungeons use video triple multi-class video I think we could do a single video of just one of the one of the strongest triple multi-class but but fighter Rogue great fighter Ranger great I'm giving this one an a as well yep yep I don't think that the fighter Rogue I I don't know where the fighter Rogue quite hits the S tier I think the fighter Rogue Ranger is the one that takes it to the S tier especially if you're doing assassin Gloom stalker Battle Master which incidentally is one of the few places where the Assassin is truly amazing yes yeah um but beyond that I do think it's a generally strong thing and and once again it's a case where you really only need to take like three levels of Rogue to get what you're looking for here and then go back to the fighter coming onto the sorcerer I think that we Face many of the problems that we faced with The Bard with even less Synergy the sorcerers are one class that one of the spell casting classes where we've never seen a sorcerer melee subclass or a sorcerer melee support thing we do see people do Paladin sorcerer because of the the Smite conversion we've actually done done a video where we talked about that combo specifically but unfortunately the Synergy there's nowhere to put that Synergy in the Paladin there's nowhere to put that Synergy with the fighter and the Sorcerer together I think that if you're playing a fighter sorcerer's not your choice it's just I actually think this is our first D tier of the video it's definitely the worst no okay no no no no is it worse than the Druid I don't think it's necessary like I think that you could build it I just think I think it's worse than the drew the journey at least had spores it had one subclass that allowed us to kind of lend ourselves to mail it okay what if we did something where we were a Divine Soul sorcerer and use that as a different way of being a cleric and now we have metamagic to Quicken the cleric spells as a bonus action that seems like a really roundabout way when I could have just taken cleric yeah but it might be more effective for us because it's giving us a quicker way of throwing down Spirit Guardians basically and now we also have Fireball in the mix and Charisma which why wouldn't I just play an Eldritch Knight Bill you're going to do that you're gonna be Elders tonight yeah with Divine Souls I'm giving it a d I don't like it I don't like it I'm not as I'm not as down on that as you I'm gonna give it a c plus you're so optimistic today I think that there's potential in it I think that there's a specific way that you could put it together that maybe you find something that works but and I don't think that it's terrible because again I come back to this whole idea the fighter is the bacon open goes with like and the Sorcerer is my ice cream you just I was just about to say it baby everything except for ice cream I love ice cream but I don't want bacon on my ice cream you know what else is actually not good bacon flavored potato chips actually I kind of dig those although I would have bacon on my nachos oh yeah yeah but the sorcerer is one of my favorite classes in the game we know that it's ice cream the fighter is bacon it goes with everything but not with sorcerer detier okay all right um moving along to the Warlock we have another combination here of one combination although hex blade yeah but here's the thing we're starting with fighter we're taking a bunch of levels of fighter yeah did we are we playing a fighter with Max Charisma this is a pale comparison to the Paladin warlock hex blade that's also like when we get to the Warlock video maybe if you're a hex blade and you take a couple levels of fighter great but if you're a fighter and you're playing a fighter and then you're like level six or seven and you're like maybe I'll pick up a level of uh or a few levels of warlock to get hex blade it actually yeah you you I you would have had to start with hex player and that's not what this is I just don't think they think yeah I I think that even that combo of trying to do something around the hacks play with the fighter and you're taking more than two levels of fighter I think that's just not a good character yeah that's like a c I think that that to me almost is a D um I just think that you fi you really struggle to find combinations there this is an interesting one because it's a full reversal when we look at the Warlock taking levels of Fighter versus a fighter taking it but like absolutely the fighter does not want warlock levels and even if we're I mean we're talking about one subclass because unfortunately the hex Blade's the big Marshall one any other warlock subject yes no no just no yeah so I'm giving this one a d okay the wizard with the wizard again we have one subclass to talk about here that maybe has potential and the rest I think don't really okay so I'm gonna try to sell you on this one really okay on why it could arguably be asked here and we're talking not a wizard dipping in fighter we're talking a fighter dipping and wisdom yeah I'm I'm saying okay I'm imagining a character that is going to be fighter 11 wizard nine okay we're going to be an Eldritch Knight okay with those fighter levels added to the wizard levels we're actually going to bump it just up enough so that we have a sixth level spell slot okay okay so if you compare fighter 11 wizard 9 to straight up Eldritch Knight 20. I think that this is hands down stronger than Elders Knight 20. now we will want to invest in our intelligence yes we we will with this character and what about the journey to level 20. well we're going to be a dexterity-based fighter to start we're going to have all our Marshall weapon proficiencies and for the first couple levels we can wear armor and fight with sword and shield and be a pretty reasonable Frontline tank then from there we'll take all of our wizard levels and balance things out and we will eventually be a character who is going to be slinging around spells like animate objects and summon uh summon Fey we're going to be able to teleport throw down walls of force fireballs and counter spells we're going to have plenty of spell slots to convert into shield and we are going to have all the Eldritch Knight tricks and we're also going to have blade Song and all of the other blade singer tricks as well we're going to issue our armor once we become a blade singer and this is gonna this is a pretty powerful character I don't I it's it's definitely more martially focused than a straight blade singer 20 and it's definitely more spell cast refocused than straight Eldritch Knight 20. but is this your true spell sword I think that this is a character that feels good to play and it feels like a true hybrid that is strong at all levels of play I do think it's interesting though that for I would go straight fighter to 11. and then start taking my wizard levels again it's one that takes a while to come online slowly I actually think that Eldritch Knight six bladesinger six looks pretty good on paper um I will you've talked me out of a very low ranking I still don't think that this is anywhere close to some of the amazing combinations we've talked about unless you've been invited to a level 21 shot that maybe it works I think it's perfectly serviceable past level nine I think that your pain point for this character is going to be between unfortunately right at The Sweet Spot of DnD that's that's the issue so you can give it what you're going to give it I'm giving this a b and that's because you've convinced me to I it's gone up okay I'm giving it an A and I think the blade singer elgar's Knight is an is potentially an S I don't know if it's as strong as S as the other ones I really like it it feels like a fun character you're also a stand for wizards though I am I am like if you look at a fighter you're like you know it would make you cooler being a wizard okay yeah yes it would but we could do it interesting things here I still think we we got a lot of we got a lot to work with I do wonder if there's something to work with in being a war Wizard or an objurer I'm sure you could find something but I think that those those are where it really drops off for me as well I think that you do probably need to be a blade singer on the wizard side of things now that we've gone through all of our rankings and we've decided what our biases and opinions are let's talk about what the community gave all of these classes so in our community rankings we asked people to pick their top three picks and staying as a single class fighter was an option and the reason why we did that is we wanted to see which ones pulled ahead in preference from the community of just being a single class fighter I think military are interesting that's always an important line to draw in the sand is there's a there's a line and that's why we have that option the line becomes any combination that isn't as good as staying a single class that's kind of saying something that like you're going to be stronger if you just stayed as the fighter but there are a few that people thought were were better so 72.4 percent gave it to Barbarian which is the clear winner and I think we gave it us here I think that that definitely checks out then after that we have Rogue which we gave an A2 and actually I personally thought that there were a few other options that were a bit better than the Rogue the Rogue is the Rogue is amazing it's really good it deserves to be above staying single classified what's interesting though is our third option is staying a single class fighter that is the third winner and I personally think that Ranger Paladin and cleric all deserved better the Druid was the clear loser in the community rankings with The Bard and the Sorcerer also being very lowly ranked by the community only a less than three percent of people who gave these 0.7 for the Druid the artificer was also quite low and of kind of the uh the the artificer and the monk were also quite low as was the cleric I think the cleric was the only one that I would say got done dirty I think the cleric could be ranked a lot higher than what the community vote gave it but I do agree that the the top of the line picks are bang on I I do think that when we ask people to pick their top three cleric is not your first second or third choice usually and that's probably why it fell behind it's it's tough with our rankings because some of the ones that have very little it doesn't mean that they're terrible it just means that they weren't majority of people's top three and so that's always the tough part is cleric did get done Dirty by these numbers but also it's hard to say that I would pick cleric over a barbarian a rogue a ranger or just staying a single-class fighter Maybe but it depends what I'm going for overall though the fighter is a very versatile class and I I think giving it the title of the bacon of D and D um as far as pairing it I mean is it the cheese cheese is up there with bacon with what it will go with I mean that's why the bacon grilled cheese yeah cheese and bacon cheese bacon and bread I'm you know is there another class that's the cheese C for cheese C for Charisma maybe it's the Charisma based classes that are the cheese yeah the cleric is the bread also it's really it's you can really cheese d by combining exactly so the cleric is the bread because bread goes with anything but it's never like the star of the show also that feels oddly okay yeah our daily bread yes uh and it feels appropriate for the Charisma based classes to be the cheesy ones and then the fighter is the meat bacon the meat yeah the bacon yeah there you have it our food analogies as usual yes uh we'll call this the the the bread bacon cheese theory of Dungeons and Dragons there you go there you have it um so if you so tell us about your favorite way to make a bacon grilled cheese sandwich and your thoughts on this video and what your favorite fighter combinations are in the comments below the videos on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters who all agree with us that cheese bacon and bread are life if you want to become a patron of our show support the channel and get on our Patron only Discord server follow the links in the description below and if you want to see us cheesing it up with a lot of bacon and bread you can watch our live play in the worlds of drachenheim which is Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more tier ranking content for DND 5e right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon bring bacon and cheese and bread I guess it's a party

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 180,342

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: kVO9JG7cmtU

Length: 50min 7sec (3007 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2023