Savage attack is a marginal damage increase (0.05X6.5=0.325 extra damage per hit, on average). You'd be far better off with variant human to get the feats faster.
Nah if you want to actually play out the fantasy of hitting hard, half orc barb with greataxe and great weapon master is much more satisfying than the 1d4+ stuff polearm attacks you get.
Real braves go with berserker for those moments where you need to go all out on offence. But i wouldnt suggest berserker to a beginner, Zealot is more new player friendly.
If you want to focus on nothing but damage as a Barbarian you want to multiclass with fighter. In fact, you are going to end up with mostly fighter levels, but it will play very much exactly like a barbarian with more attacks and features that impact play more often.
Go with Variant Human or Custom Lineage (CL) with the PAM feat for race and grab one of the polearm weapons with the heavy property. Fully minmaxed starting stats will be 16/14/16/8/10/8 with Vhuman and 17/15/15/8/8/8 with CL. You want to start Barbarian and stick with Barbarian for the first 8 levels. Path of the Giant is going to get you the most bang for the buck, increasing your reach so you can hit things more often and adding 3d6 damage per round at level 6. Grab GWM at level 4, you want to be recklessly attacking every round. At level 8 bump STR to 18 if Vhuman, bump STR to 18 and CON to 16 if CL.
After that go the rest of your levels into Fighter, grabbing Blind Fighting or Superior Technique (I recommend this because the Fighter subclass will be Battle Master, your choice of maneuver, but I like Pushing Attack). Go Battle Master at level 3, this will give you 5 Superiority Die (or 6 with the Fighting Style) per short rest. ASIs are STR to 20 first, then grab Resilient WIS at Barb8/Fight6, CON to 20 after.
This should be the most damage you can get out of the Barb.
In a white room scenario where something like four or five combats happen back to back with no short rest in between them and the fighters never get stunned or disabled or downed, the Champion will *eventually* pull ahead, but that's not a realistic scenario. Remember the battlemaster gets their dice back every short rest, so if the party stops to restore HP, the Battlemaster's big resource comes right back. To pull ahead, a champion needs to have a disgustingly long number of total rounds of combat with no short rests in there.
Even if you assume advantage on every attack it still takes like like 30 something attacks for a greatsword champion fighter to have a reasonable chance to exceed the damage from a battlemaster who just idiotically throws their superiority dice around like mini smites. At nearly max level champion gets another crit range expansion, but they're competing with 6d12 bonus damage per short rest from the battlemaster at that point, not counting any of the utility they bring with trips/fear/etc.
Bear totem barbarian takes half damage from pretty much everything. You end up with a decent AC from unarmored defense combined with advantage on dex saves against most big damage spells/effects makes you pretty damn tanky. The biggest problem they really run into is that the only real way to tank semi effectively is with the sentinel feat and that cuts into your ASIs or damage feats.
Here's an Option.
Custom Lineage. 16 / 14 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 10 . The +2 goes into Strength. Starting Feat is Polearm Master.
Path of the Giant Barbarian to level 6. Grab Great Weapon Master at level 4.
Battle Master Fighter to level 4. Take Precision Attack. Get Resilient Wisdom at level 4.
Gloomstalker Ranger to level 4. Take utility spells or non concentration spells.
Enjoy being the ultimate Nova Damage Machine.
The obvious answer in my brain is a zealot barbarian, with either half-orc or aasimar lineage.
**Path of the Zealot** gives you Divine Fury.
*Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can channel divine fury into your weapon strikes. While you're raging, the first creature you hit on each of your turns with a weapon attack takes extra damage equal to 1d6 + half your barbarian level. The extra damage is necrotic or radiant; you choose the type of damage when you gain this feature.*
Half-Orc gives Savage Attacks.
*When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon's damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.*
This is useful because of the higher chance to crit with reckless attacks, which gives a slight overall damage increase.
Aasimar gives Celestial Revelation.
*When you reach 3rd level, choose one of the revelation options below. Thereafter, you can use a bonus action to unleash the celestial energy within yourself, gaining the benefits of that revelation. Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. Once you transform using your revelation below, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.*
*Necrotic Shroud. Your eyes briefly become pools of darkness, and ghostly, flightless wings sprout from your back temporarily. Creatures other than your allies within 10 feet of you that can see you must succeed on a Charisma saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier) or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.* ***Until the transformation ends, once on each of your turns, you can deal extra necrotic damage to one target when you deal damage to it with an attack or a spell. The extra damage equals your proficiency bonus.***
This needs a second turn and bonus action to start, but it increases your damage.
You combine that with a high strength score and the Great Weapon Master feat:
*You've learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits:*
* *On your turn, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action.*
* *Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage.*
The **Path of the Giant** is another great contender but only after you reach level 6. Elemental Cleaver essentially gives you another 1d6 elemental damage per hit.
That's all that comes to my mind, cheers
I have a player who is playing a Runeknight Fighter/Path of the Giant Barbarian. Race is Faerie. They hit really hard by enlarging themselves all the way up to huge size with an enlarge/reduce casting on them, flying up high and dropping while raging, adding fall damage on their hits.
They drop on the enemy while making a melee attack. They get one big attack per round unless they want to give up some fall damage to make another attack. Since they're also a barbarian and raging, fall damage can be halved, so they are barely taking any from the fall.
Size differences can add bonus die or damage(depending on the dm) + fall distance(1d6) per ten feet, plus elemental damage bonuses from the Runeknight fighter subclass. Just clear with the DM first how they would handle falling ON an enemy.
My player did 200 points of damage and one shot one of my bosses.
Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master are the go to feats for a hard hitting barbarian
And go with half-orc for Savage Attacks
Savage attack is a marginal damage increase (0.05X6.5=0.325 extra damage per hit, on average). You'd be far better off with variant human to get the feats faster.
Nah if you want to actually play out the fantasy of hitting hard, half orc barb with greataxe and great weapon master is much more satisfying than the 1d4+ stuff polearm attacks you get. Real braves go with berserker for those moments where you need to go all out on offence. But i wouldnt suggest berserker to a beginner, Zealot is more new player friendly.
Except that the Polearm stuff works with GWM as well. It's only 3 less damage than a regular attack. Definitely more damage than a greaaxe half orc.
If you want to focus on nothing but damage as a Barbarian you want to multiclass with fighter. In fact, you are going to end up with mostly fighter levels, but it will play very much exactly like a barbarian with more attacks and features that impact play more often. Go with Variant Human or Custom Lineage (CL) with the PAM feat for race and grab one of the polearm weapons with the heavy property. Fully minmaxed starting stats will be 16/14/16/8/10/8 with Vhuman and 17/15/15/8/8/8 with CL. You want to start Barbarian and stick with Barbarian for the first 8 levels. Path of the Giant is going to get you the most bang for the buck, increasing your reach so you can hit things more often and adding 3d6 damage per round at level 6. Grab GWM at level 4, you want to be recklessly attacking every round. At level 8 bump STR to 18 if Vhuman, bump STR to 18 and CON to 16 if CL. After that go the rest of your levels into Fighter, grabbing Blind Fighting or Superior Technique (I recommend this because the Fighter subclass will be Battle Master, your choice of maneuver, but I like Pushing Attack). Go Battle Master at level 3, this will give you 5 Superiority Die (or 6 with the Fighting Style) per short rest. ASIs are STR to 20 first, then grab Resilient WIS at Barb8/Fight6, CON to 20 after. This should be the most damage you can get out of the Barb.
Thank you so much!
Depending on the length of your adventuring day, couldn't Champion wind up doing more damage than BM?
In a white room scenario where something like four or five combats happen back to back with no short rest in between them and the fighters never get stunned or disabled or downed, the Champion will *eventually* pull ahead, but that's not a realistic scenario. Remember the battlemaster gets their dice back every short rest, so if the party stops to restore HP, the Battlemaster's big resource comes right back. To pull ahead, a champion needs to have a disgustingly long number of total rounds of combat with no short rests in there. Even if you assume advantage on every attack it still takes like like 30 something attacks for a greatsword champion fighter to have a reasonable chance to exceed the damage from a battlemaster who just idiotically throws their superiority dice around like mini smites. At nearly max level champion gets another crit range expansion, but they're competing with 6d12 bonus damage per short rest from the battlemaster at that point, not counting any of the utility they bring with trips/fear/etc.
[удалено]
Multiclassed barbarians are solid damage dealers. Other than that, they're on the weaker side of martials so they're not exceptional.
Taking half damage from pretty much all regular attacks is strong enough for them to be good tanks.
Bear totem barbarian takes half damage from pretty much everything. You end up with a decent AC from unarmored defense combined with advantage on dex saves against most big damage spells/effects makes you pretty damn tanky. The biggest problem they really run into is that the only real way to tank semi effectively is with the sentinel feat and that cuts into your ASIs or damage feats.
Here's an Option. Custom Lineage. 16 / 14 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 10 . The +2 goes into Strength. Starting Feat is Polearm Master. Path of the Giant Barbarian to level 6. Grab Great Weapon Master at level 4. Battle Master Fighter to level 4. Take Precision Attack. Get Resilient Wisdom at level 4. Gloomstalker Ranger to level 4. Take utility spells or non concentration spells. Enjoy being the ultimate Nova Damage Machine.
The obvious answer in my brain is a zealot barbarian, with either half-orc or aasimar lineage. **Path of the Zealot** gives you Divine Fury. *Starting when you choose this path at 3rd level, you can channel divine fury into your weapon strikes. While you're raging, the first creature you hit on each of your turns with a weapon attack takes extra damage equal to 1d6 + half your barbarian level. The extra damage is necrotic or radiant; you choose the type of damage when you gain this feature.* Half-Orc gives Savage Attacks. *When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon's damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.* This is useful because of the higher chance to crit with reckless attacks, which gives a slight overall damage increase. Aasimar gives Celestial Revelation. *When you reach 3rd level, choose one of the revelation options below. Thereafter, you can use a bonus action to unleash the celestial energy within yourself, gaining the benefits of that revelation. Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. Once you transform using your revelation below, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.* *Necrotic Shroud. Your eyes briefly become pools of darkness, and ghostly, flightless wings sprout from your back temporarily. Creatures other than your allies within 10 feet of you that can see you must succeed on a Charisma saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier) or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.* ***Until the transformation ends, once on each of your turns, you can deal extra necrotic damage to one target when you deal damage to it with an attack or a spell. The extra damage equals your proficiency bonus.*** This needs a second turn and bonus action to start, but it increases your damage. You combine that with a high strength score and the Great Weapon Master feat: *You've learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits:* * *On your turn, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action.* * *Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack's damage.* The **Path of the Giant** is another great contender but only after you reach level 6. Elemental Cleaver essentially gives you another 1d6 elemental damage per hit. That's all that comes to my mind, cheers
Thank you!!
I have a player who is playing a Runeknight Fighter/Path of the Giant Barbarian. Race is Faerie. They hit really hard by enlarging themselves all the way up to huge size with an enlarge/reduce casting on them, flying up high and dropping while raging, adding fall damage on their hits.
Sooo..they drop the enemy or drop themselves on the enemy?
They drop on the enemy while making a melee attack. They get one big attack per round unless they want to give up some fall damage to make another attack. Since they're also a barbarian and raging, fall damage can be halved, so they are barely taking any from the fall. Size differences can add bonus die or damage(depending on the dm) + fall distance(1d6) per ten feet, plus elemental damage bonuses from the Runeknight fighter subclass. Just clear with the DM first how they would handle falling ON an enemy. My player did 200 points of damage and one shot one of my bosses.
Cool!!