Our Top Magic Items for Barbarians, Fighters, and Paladins in D&D 5e

this week's episode of our show has been sponsored by world anvil this powerful web-based rpg campaign manager is perfect for building organizing and creating your worlds you can use it to plan your games create maps and handouts and keep all of your notes at your fingertips during play or even share them online with your group they're constantly innovating with new features such as integrated character sheets for many major rpg systems so you can manage your world and the characters in it a basic account at world anvil is completely free letting you get a feeling for all the amazing features on the platform follow the links in the description below or go to worldanville.com to try it out for free today and now onto 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 dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are sharing our top picks for magic items for barbarians fighters and paladins those tanky melee damage dealing classes that like to get up close and personal wield heavy weapons heavy armor and really bring the fight to the enemy now of course there is a lot of versatility in how you build these types of characters we are focusing on the more standard builds that revolve around a strength-based damage dealing character if you're playing a fighter who is going to be dexterity based or use a bow you may want to check out our video for magic items for rogues and rangers that you can find right up over there check that out to find some more dexterity based magic items but we're going to be focusing on some of the heavy hitting and really unique magic items that can benefit some of these more strength-based play styles now up on screen you're gonna see some of the criteria that we use for picking magic items in general we tend to prefer in these videos picking interesting magic items that have unique powers rather than magic items that just give flat plus bonuses so you're not gonna hear us talking about plus one weapons and plus two armor in this video today we're gonna be focusing on the more fun and interesting things and particularly we've tried to look a little bit beyond just weapons and armor in some of our picks kelly and i have each picked one magic item of each rarity uncommon rare very rare and legendary as well as a wild card and a few honorable mentions each as well there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling kicking things off with the uncommon magic items kelly what would you recommend for an uncommon magic item for a fighter barbarian or paladin so one magic item that i think is highly underrated and extremely useful is the boots of striding and springing once again if we move away from weapons and armor which clearly all of these classes might want something that these classes also want is to be able to get to the front lines or to the enemies they need to as fast as possible and by giving somebody the boots of striding and springing which allow you to make your speed 30 feet if it already isn't 30 feet which means that if you're playing a halfling or a dwarf fighter or paladin then you know you're going to get that extra walking speed but more importantly you can jump three times your normal distance though you can't jump further than your remaining movement this means that you can jump up or across three times your normal amount which really opens up a lot of maneuverability for the characters who need to get where they have to get to on the battlefield just just for a frame of reference with this your jumping speed the distance that you can cover on a horizontal jump is normally your strength modifier so with a strength of 20 you can clear 20 feet with the boots of striding and springing you can clear 60 which you actually have to dash in order to get that distance because you can't you have to really rant like run forward to get it yeah but what a useful tool for just moving around and i remember playing uh monk oddly enough that had these but it opened the game up in a new way during combat that it was really exciting to explore and i think this is a really useful magic item that can open it up for players who enjoy that sort of dynamic play with battlefield positioning not to mention that being able to jump three times the distance also means you can jump upwards three times the distance which actually means that these characters who sometimes struggle with dealing with flying enemies now have an option to jump on top of a building and then jump on top of the dragon's back or do something crazy that gets them where they need to be it actually gives this vertical element to combat that a lot of these characters don't otherwise have monty what would you pick for an uncommon magic item i think whether you're a barbarian a paladin or a fighter adamantium armor is going to be your first protocol for a suit of magical armor to equip yourself with this has to be a metal suit of armor which means that barbarians can get it as half plate whereas paladins and fighters can get it as full plate or half blade or anything that's made of metal when you wear adamantine armor any critical hit against you becomes a normal hit having given adamantine armor out to my fighters in my own campaigns i cannot tell you how disappointing it is time and time again to be reminded that i gave this magic item to the paladin because i get so excited as the dm being like the dragon crits you and they're like no no he doesn't no he doesn't crit me i'm immune to critical hits it's very satisfying for a player it it isn't super overpowered really to be immune to those critical hits it's actually a lifesaver in a lot of cases because critical hits are that unexpected thing that can really bring down a fighter or a paladin or barbarian on the front lines faster than anticipated so it gives that nice security policy against a really nasty hit without buffing their ac to an inordinate level now why would you think that a barbarian would want the armor over their natural uh armor i think for for a lot of barbarians you have to have a pretty high constitution score for just the raw unarmored defense to overtake your armor because adamantium half plate gives you an ac of 15 plus up to two points of dexterity so you would need a a total modifier in your dexterity and constitution of plus seven to equal what you can get by filling out half plate so if you have a constitution of 20 and a dexterity of 14 half plate is better or a con of 18 and a dex of 16 you know you you can see how it adds adds up in those cases but um unless your stats are really off the chart uh i think your barbarians usually still still gonna want to have armor barbarians also like using reckless attack which means attacks against them are made with advantage the odds of scoring a critical hit when you have advantage go up quite considerably they get doubled and so barbarians often take a lot more crits as well and even though they're going to be raging and reducing their damage crits still hurt and this makes them even more tanky i think it's totally worth it i also think when we're looking at uncommon magic items one that is really fun to hand out and not often looked at is the javelin of lightning the javelin of lightning is a really fun toy and also with a lot of these classes they're looking at melee combat but they don't have a ton of options for things to do if they can't get up close to their enemies again the boots of striding and springing helped out with that but i think the javelin of lightning gives them an attack that is an option from range yeah the javelin lightning is basically just a normal javelin it's just that once per day you can throw it as a bolt of lightning that is a slightly weaker version of the lightning bolt spell it does about 46 lightning damage to everyone in the path just being able to get this little bit of aoe damage at range and have a nice hard-hitting ranged attack even once in the grand scheme of how often it comes up for a lot of tanki fighters just having that insurance policy that like if you needed to make one solid long ranged attack you've got it means the javelin lightning is a nice little piece that you can give out as a bonus magic item it's kind of one of those items that you can throw into a treasure hoard to bulk it out but it's still going to be something useful for the fighter barbarian or paladin that isn't necessarily like they're gonna get excited about it but it's not like you gave them another axe so as we move on to rare magic items one of my personal favorites is flame tongue i find it interesting that uh pluto jackson ended up with most of these magic items but flame tongue is a giant flaming sword it can be a great sword long sword really any type of sword that you want so you can match this to the play style of the character who acquires it and when we look at the option of being able to add 2d6 fire damage to any hits on a target that you attack with this sword it can actually add up quite a bit i think especially for the fighters who now have like action surge they get multiple attacks they get more than just two at many points in their in their careers so that 2d6 damage can really start to stack up but even in the hands of a barbarian or a paladin a paladin adding 2d6 damage on top of a smite or various other things is going to stack up as well and a barbarian with a flaming great sword is just scary on the battlefield and nobody's angry at more damage so i think this is a great weapon i also think the the flame tongue is the perfect template for home brewing a magic item like you can make the flame tongue into an axe you could make the flame tongue into a halberd or whatever magic item your fighter barbarian or paladin is using and it doesn't have to be fire you could reflavor the flame tongue to be electrical damage and have it do bonus lightning damage or even have it do acid damage or anything else that fits the flavor of your character a little bit more it's a really easy magic item to re-flavor to suit the character of whatever you're playing or role-playing or whatever setting you want to fit it into it doesn't really change its power level to change its damage type that much yes fire is the most commonly resistant damage type but you can kind of play around with that and make it a much more flexible item by by changing it around like that i think it's a great pick i think the only exception to this might be the paladins wanting uh a sunblade over flame tongue uh getting that plus two uh enhancement bonus on that the fact that it glows and does extra damage against undead and fiends makes it a little bit more accurate and it doesn't deal i think as much damage as a flame tongue does but it's still a really good one that i think a lot of paladins are gonna want although a f fighter wouldn't be disappointed with a sunblade there's no restriction that says a paladin has to use one as we continue to talk about rare magic items i think of how edna from the incredibles said that superheroes should never wear capes there's actually some really awesome capes that we should take into consideration here like the cape of the montebank or the mantle of spell resistance i'm a huge fan of the cape of the montebank which basically gives you a free casting of dimension door as you fly into your cape you you whip it up disappear into it and appear somewhere else being able to do this once per day is kind of like the javelin of lightning it's just giving the player an extra one thing that they get to do and that one thing is going to come up in the most interesting and clutch situations and even as a dm handing out the cape of the montebank really feels exciting for me because i have no idea when or how they're going to use it but every time they do it makes me be like nice that was good and it's always an exciting magic item at the table and anybody is happy to get it without it feeling like they're overpowered on the flip side for barbarians and fighters in particular they are not well known for their saving throws against magic they have a couple tricks up their sleeves but oftentimes this is a really glaring weakness for fighters and barbarians and if you have a campaign where you're mind controlling your barbarian or fighter all the time you might want to throw them a bone once in a while by giving them a mantle of spell resistance probably not an item i'd give to a paladin uh because that combined with their insane saving throws mean uh your liches are gonna be very disappointed i think the last rare magic item that i would probably consider for any of these characters though going along the superhero theme what superhero doesn't want a super belt and for me the belt of dwarven kind is actually the most fun belt to give it the rare tier because it gives you a plus two bonus to your constitution and all these characters are gonna want that but then it gives you extra benefits if you're not already a dwarf which i mean you might be a dwarf dwarves make great paladins barbarians and fighters but wouldn't you like to be just a little dwarfy and grow a beard and have poison resistance and also have dark vision i think it's a great like toolbox magic item that kind of hits all these wonderful things but i think it's hilarious that anybody puts on this belt and suddenly a beard starts to grow like they're a dwarf and i i believe they're called wispy downs on the women in the dwarf community to make them sound a little nicer you know yeah i think i think the belt of drawing kind is just a cool magic item and i really like the idea of of items given to warriors as gifts in exchange for their heroic deeds rather than ones that it's a oh i just pried this off a corpse uh it's a cool magic item for that that that feeling speaking of gifts from our dwarven friends the dwarven plate is an excellent very rare magic item it's a nice suit of armor that gives you a plus two bonus to ac and if any ability would move you against your will you can subtract 10 feet from the distance that you would be moved really just making you much more sturdy and a nice plus two bonus to ac it's a pretty good suit of armor for a very rare oh oh yeah now notably this is often always plate armor but for barbarians out there i could see converting it to a suit of half plate as well and it doesn't require attunement either so it's a nice it's a much more flavorful version of full plate many of these characters are gonna want like a big tanky suit of armor and i just think that the dwarven plate just has a little bit more character to it than a generic suit of armor one of the most important pieces of armor that isn't really talked about in dnd so much but it's super important like from a historical perspective is actually a helmet and i like to think about like all those classic characters from whatever fiction whether it's the super soldier or gimli or uh even thor when they take their helmet and they put it on like you know it's business time right like that just that likes that suit up moment when the helmet comes on and what helmet is more ostentatious and amazing than the helm of brilliance this thing is covered in bling there are diamonds there are rubies there are fire opals on this helmet and each of them actually stores spell energy on it that you can release permanently consuming the gem uh in in the helm the spells that you can cast with this are daylight fireball wall of fire and prismatic spray and they're all done at a spell saving throw of 18. so this gives your fighter some nice aoe ranged attacks but there's even more to it than that as long as the helm has at least one ruby you have fire resistance and at least as long as the helm has at least one fire opal you can actually command the helm to light up any weapon that you're already holding causing it to deal an extra 1d6 fire damage furthermore the helm can also glow with bright light that damages undead with radiant damage as well so not only does it give you lots of extra spells that you can attack with but it augments your vision if you need the light to see by it gives you a defensive feature of fire resistance and also gives you a little bit of extra fire damage on all your attacks as well and it and it combines with any other magic item that you might be using the only downside to the helm of brilliance is that if you roll a one on a saving throw against fire damage it can ignite all the rubies and blow you up something i really like about this item and items like this in general is that by giving it to a more battle-focused character you're actually kind of broadening the horizons on how they can approach any situation in dungeons and dragons you've given them a pocketful of spells and a few unique special options and i think there are a lot of magic items that do this sort of thing that that add this sort of spell casting light component to an otherwise non-spell casting class and i think that's really brilliant the important thing about the helm is that it only has a chance of blowing up if you roll a one on a d20 as an additional role after you take fire damage from failing a saving throw against the spell so a dragon's breath weapon actually won't cause it to blow up or getting hit with a firebolt spell or other sources of fire damage won't cause this you have to fail a saving throw against a spell that does fire damage which makes it a much more narrow case i think a lot of people are like oh man well then what happens if you get dragoned well it actually doesn't get set off by dragon's breath as we move on to legendary magic items monty and i actually had a bit of a discussion about what our favorite options were and it turns out that we actually talked about two of our favorite options in another video so the holy avenger and the hammer of thunderbolts are indeed some of the best choices for these types of characters however if you want to see more information about them you can check out our video on legendary weapons right up over there i think we also covered the vorpal sword and the luck blade in that so we do a real deep dive on the legendary magic weapons but we wanted to focus for this one on some choices that weren't weapons so talking about legendary magic items one of my favorite choices is the armor of invulnerability you have resistance to non-magical damage while you wear this armor but you can use an action to make yourself immune to non-magical damage for 10 minutes uh you can only use this feature once per day but it basically means that before you go into that really brutal combat encounter you can just shut off all non-magical damage meaning that you know the big bosses and stuff like that might still have an equal chance at you but you're just ignoring those minions they don't even matter you can literally walk right through them and their weapons are going to bounce off of you this is a great tool for somebody who likes to be on the front lines or likes to get in towards the bigger targets ignoring the little guys this armor will let you do that without even taking a point of damage from those weak little minions and also it's just invincibility like being able to just hit that superstar and be invincible for 10 minutes is awesome the next magic item that i love for fighters barbarians and paladins isn't quite a weapon but in many respects it is and this is the rod of lordly might it's technically a magic rod but it has six buttons on it that let you transform the rod into a variety of weapons and items and purposes and i love it because not only does it feel like giving your character a uber magic weapon but then it's a weapon that has a lot of cool tools as well it's almost like they can reshape their weapon into being whatever they need which is kind of a neat ability so the rod of lordly might has six buttons on it you can use it just as a mace and it has a plus three bonus to attack and damage rules but you can press the buttons on it and it changes how it works the first button turns it into a flame tongue and in the rules it can be any type of sword so you can make it a flame tongue short sword or greatsword and you can change it on a whim which is a great like weapon swap power to have like i love this idea that like you can just make your rod a great sword but then you could turn it back into a long sword and pick up a shield or dual wield it with another weapon and have that flexibility feels very high level to me in addition to transforming it into a flame tongue pressing buttons two or three transform it into a plus three battle axe or plus three spear it's buttons four five and six that have the more interesting powers if you press button number four it extends into a 50 foot long climbing pole that has little arm and leg places that stick out from it and can carry up to 4 000 pounds of weight so now not only do you have a magic weapon but if you have any 50 foot cliffs you need to climb or scale or anything like that you have a great utility item here as well i've also seen clever players use this to push enemies around by activating the rod underneath them button 5 transforms it into a battering ram and button 6 indicates magnetic north but then it has three other powers that you can use with it once per day first of all it has the drain life ability when you hit a creature with a melee attack using the rod you can cause the creature to make a dc-17 constitution saving throw and on a failure they take an extra 4d6 necrotic damage and you regain a number of hit points equal to half the necrotic damage that you dealt you can use this once per day with the paralyzed ability similar idea but now they have to make a dc-17 strength saving throw or become paralyzed for one minute and with the terrify ability it is a dc 17 wisdom saving throw or else they are frightened of you for one minute so three really great options that you get to pick and choose on top of all the other amazing options that this weapon gives you so let's move on to our wild card picks you and i each had a great wild card pick that is extremely versatile and we were looking at the ring of spell storing and the belt of giant strength both of these are trixie items that you that have a lot that you should watch out for i think the belt of giant strength which can be a fire giant strength item a frost giant strength item a cloud giant or storm giant which transforms your even hill giant which transforms your character's strength to 21 25 27 or 29 these items i think are highly sought after by barbarians fighters and paladins because it's a massive buff to their melee attacks right it totally breaks the bounds of bonded accuracy and it can be stacked with a magic weapon like i've seen fighters that have a belt of storm giant strength so that's a plus nine strength modifier and then you add to that a plus three weapon and now they're getting like a plus 18 to attack rolls and a plus 12 to damage rolls that is really hard hitting yeah i think that with the belt of giant strength the reason why it's a wild card is because there's so many variations of the belt and depending on when you want to award it to your player and how powerful you want to make them just make sure that you're giving them the right option and keep in mind other magic items that you also want to award to the party i usually steer around the middle of the giant strength options uh just and i usually use those a little later in the game i try to avoid giving them the crazy strength bonus but either way it's a game-changing magic eye oh yeah and it can have a big impact and also makes those strength-based characters feel really rewarded by gaining that they they see the benefits immediately by using this magic item when we move on to the ring of spells storing i think that this is a really interesting item going back to something i said about the helm of brilliance is that i love these magic items that give a small sample of spell casting to an otherwise non-spell casting character if you have somebody who can cast spells in your party the ring of spell storing is really fun because now it means that the spellcaster can help prepare the ring by putting spells in it for the fighter barbarian or paladin to take with them and use at their leisure also if you meet any npcs that have some cool spells you can always ask them to pop one into your ring so that you can then use it later on in the game you can store up to five levels worth of spells in the ring and cast them as you would normally you get one casting of each spell that's stored in the ring and then you have to refill the ring yeah and and you can add a lot of various spells that spells that normally require concentration and then the fighter or barbarian who normally has nothing to concentrate on because they don't cast spells now has an opportunity to do this the only problem here is that don't give the concentration spell to the barbarian because they can't concentrate on something when they're raging so you'll want to give them something that is a different type of utility it's a little tricky to use there but with the fighter you could put haste in here you could put shield in here you could put protection from energy um a a really good choice actually for a barbarian uh to fill up the ring of spell storing are those buff spells that don't require concentration like you could put mirror image blink or fire shield in the ring of spell story and then they could end up with those on themselves instead of a caster normally those are spells that you can actually only cast on yourself anyways but the ring of spell story lets you kind of circumvent that in general you mentioned shield i think shield is one of the best spells to turn tanky characters into even more tanky just by adding a plus five to their ac i would be happy as a fighter barbarian or paladin if i just had a ring of spell storing full of shield yeah and that's it just to negate hits and when you cast shield it lasts until the start of your next turn so it means that if you just bust this out during a key moment in combat you're not taking nearly as many hits it's going to be huge for those already big tanky characters yeah another clutch one to put in there counter spell yes having more people being able to counter spell spells it's going to be a game changer so it's so good it's so good yeah it's just a lot of flexibility it's really tempting for the spellcaster to want to take the ring of spell storing but i actually think it's way more powerful when the non-spell casters have it and then they this the spellcaster in your party uses it to magic up the fighter or barbarian in in some cool way i think paladins themselves are just gonna love the ring of spell storing because they already have their own spells that they can fill it up with but that added versatility of being able to work with your party members in this way is really gonna make it a lot more unique so this has been a look at our top magic items for barbarians fighters and paladins in dungeons and dragons 5th edition tell us about some of the amazing magic items that you've got a chance to use in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters from both kelly and i to all you out there on patreon a huge thanks for the bottoms of our hearts if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider joining our patreon community by following the links in the description below you may also be interested to hear that we are creating a book we are going to be partnering with ghostfire games to bring drakenheim to life as a campaign module for fifth edition you can check out the links below to join the mailing list and get updates on when the kickstarter is coming we are hoping that it will be a little bit later this year but stay tuned to the links below to make sure that you are up to date on all of the information regarding this kickstarter be sure to check out our live play in the worlds of drakenheim which is tuesday nights at 6pm eastern at twitch.tv dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes of our show right up over here and we have plenty more guides to all the magic items in dungeons the dragon's 5th edition you can find all that right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 224,058

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: V3xP6TJdosQ

Length: 30min 39sec (1839 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021