I am playing an Emerald Gem Dragonborn Totem Barbarian multiclass with 3 points dipped into a Rune Knight Fighter. I am resistant to all damage during my rage thanks to my race and bear totem and runes are just a lot of fun to use and quite powerful to just have in my pocket. I recommend the build heartily!
Great video! Definitely agree about the Beast Barb. I'm playing a Shadar-kai Beast Barbarian / Assassin Rogue, will eventually be Barb 8 / Rogue 12. Lot's of fun! Works great thematically. I'm not a sneaky assassin, I'm the kind you hire to make a mess and send a message. Don't lose too much defence compared to Totem as Shadar-kai gives resistance to ALL damage after you teleport. Prefer it to Totem as you choose based on the situation what you need, more AC/extra attack, and all of the level 6 abilities go really well with rogue thematically to get you surprise at the start of combat or provide roleplaying options. 6 ASI's, teleporting around the battlefield to proc assassinate and guarentee crits + every teleport gives you full resistance (better than bear totem for 1 round) + you recover all teleports and rages on short rests with shadar-kai's trance. To top it off all of the Rogue features make you better at evading/avoiding damage and improve your skills dramatically meaning you have more fun outside combat.
I love that! I recently finished playing a Shadar-Kai Rogue and loved it. If you want more Beast Barbarian content, I have a deep-dive video into the subclass ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-itkaSgFSFm0.html
Barbarian and warlock can be multiclassed so you can rage with armor of agathy, which is a great scalable non concentration spell that can be cast before raging. Strength will be a priority over charisma, but it should still be high enough to make the lifedrinker invocation powerful. Subclasses could be mixed and matched in rather interesting ways. Bear totem Barbarian 3 for extra resistances and fathomless warlock 6 for guardian could for a 2d8 reaction damage reduction or zealot Barbarian 3 for the extra d6 necrotic/radiant damage on first hit and genie warlock 1 for extra proficiency based damage in first hit.
I am about to multiclass my Ancestral Guardian Barbarian with Peace Cleric because of this video. He's obsessed with protecting his other party members. My DM throws lots of AOE stuff at us, so my Barbarian subclass didn't really pop off like I thought it would. But Peace Cleric fills up those gaps a bit. Great combo!
I'm about to level up twice from Path of The Beast Barbarian 6/Fighter 2 to adding on Fighter 4. I'm debating on the subclass, but I really want echo knight to work thematically. My PC and his dad both got their lycanthrope from my PC's mom, who is a druidbarian. However, I just learned that she's an evil barbarian tribe leader, who is bent on summoning a tarrasque. Also, she had turned my dad into a frenzied misshapen wolf-like creature. Now, I want my PC to either find a new source of power or tap into a more mystical side of his innate abilities. This is how the Echo Knight will fit into play. The Echo will either be an innate nature spirit ability that he learns to manipulate or a nature-esque ability that is gifted to him by an otherworldly being.
rune knight has a fire restraint with fire rune. it does 2d6 per turn. and because the creature is restrained everyone in your party gets advantage on attacks
My favorite is yuan-ti pure blood,totem of the bear barbarian lvl3, monster slayer ranger lvl8, & phantom rogue lvl9. Defense:Rage,uncanny dodge,evasion,proficiency & advantage on all saves(use all ASI’s on the feat resilience’s.) plus 1D6 added to all ability checks & saves against effects from the target of your slayers pray ability. Offense: sneak attack 5D6, proficiency mod per rest,phantom bonus to sneak attack 3D6 necrotic damage your another enemy within 30ft of you. Extra awesomeness: Slayers prey extra damage Slayers prey knowledge Bunch of skill proficiencies Languages Good berry to heal in combat while raging.
I came up with a pretty cool Ranger multiclass: You didn't cover this in your video, but the ranger gets Strength and Dexterity as their main saves. And if you are planning to be a Spear and Board Barbarian with Shield Master, that pays off handsomely. You see, you will now be making your Dex saves with Advantage, +2 from your shield AND Proficiency bonus. And on a success you take NO damage. "The dragon breathes a torrent of fire over the party. As the flames subside everyone lies fallen or deeply injured on the ground except for the Barbarian, who stands up from behind her shield and rushes forward, spear in hand." Added bonuses include: - Longstrider as a Buff spell, getting a 50ft speed (fly speed with winged boots). - Goodberry as your own stash of healing - Fighting style like Blindfighting (pretty useful in melee) - Expertise from Deft Explorer. Expertise in Athletics for those BA shoves from Shield Master. - Some pretty solid options in terms of subclasses: Hunter for Hordebreaker never seemed more appropriate. - Fog Cloud as a possible Get Out of Jail Free Card (drop rage, cast this and leg it) - This works as intended from the moment you pick up Shield Master. Many builds come online too late. - Pick up the Spear and you immediately have a decent ranged option as well. Plus now you get to play a Spartan/Amazon warrior! You do need different stats to multiclass into Ranger, making your dump stats charisma and intelligence. But to be fair, taking Resilient Wisdom and bumping that 13 up to a 14 plus Prof. Bonus really helps you negate those Wisdom saves. I'd consider picking the Shadar-kai race, Custom Lineage or Vuman. Shadarkai have the ability to become resistant to all damage types for one turn, and because they are Elves you get advantage against Charm effects, which include show stoppers such as Charm Person, Hypnotic Pattern and Dominate Person. I'd go in this order: 1 Ranger 5 Barbarian 2 Ranger Then whatever.
@@FlutesLoot Except for those stat requirements I feel it works out great! But then again it just forces you to care a little more about those all important Wisdom saves, which is not all bad ^_^
I played a barbarian Tork who hated his rage but loved his reckless attack, nature, honey, and his everlasting Mellons. Decided to multi into druid. Inspired by his magic items a pair of Mellons that would regrow nearly instantly if not fully consumed. He ended his adventures with ripping out throat of a red dragon one v one in a arena fight in biggest town. Managing to not rage the whole fight. Finally retiring at a circle he earned way into, to raise a family an enjoy river of Honey he earned from the fey.🧸🍯🍈
@@FlutesLoot been trying to decide on my Viking Skarld raider charisma character for my next campaign and beem trying to decide between bard-barain or roguarian (barbarian rogue) with inspiring leader. I'm indecisive 😁
@@Ulfhednir9 oh man, I like the idea of a Barbarian with a rapier (maybe you watched my video about that), so I might have to lean toward the Rogue if I were in your shoes.
@FlutesLoot its especially fun if your barbarian roots are hidden. no one expects the Goblin rogue to get into the thick of things and start splitting shins. but im not sure how much of each or subclass of rogue.
Rune knight is amazing. Use fire storm runes. Storm rune to give disadvantage on escaping the restraining from the restraint from fire rune which means they not only restrained longer they burn longer. Works well with my Rune knight + battlerager character
@@FlutesLoot i haven't tried it yet but could make a great grappler with that (spikey armour damage and disadvantage for them while raging). Battle rager is crap but it could work. Fits the theme too imho
@@FlutesLoot Ok time for a wee update. I managed to grapple a Dragon, with ease. I used giants might and got large, raging for advantage and then grappled the overgrown lizard before it could fly out of reach again, allowing my melee party members to kill it and damaging it with my spikey armour. I am not even a grapple build but it worked great :) I love this video are you going to do others for the other classes?
@@Ulfhednir9 thank you for coming back for an update! My respect for the Rune Knight has grown (pun intended) immensely since my first impression. The ability to grapple a dragon is incredible! I do plan on creating more multiclassing videos for different classes. I made one already for Wizards (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mMzKOU4qAMU.html). I have articles written for multiclassing Clerics, Rogues, Barbarians, and Wizards (so far). I try to be diligent with this type of content so I get it right, meaning it takes a while for me to create the content :P (www.flutesloot.com/category/player-characters/multiclass/)
That sounds interesting. I have never explored the Blood Hunter, to be honest. I think I read it once and that was it (plus I believe it was updated since then). What kind of synergy or thematic unity would Lycan Blood Hunter have with Path of the Beast? You've got me interested!
Rune Knight for me got ruined when they nuked Giant’s Might from orbit. Class is powerful don’t get me wrong but specifically Giants Might scales like putrid garbage left out to dry unless you just really like Grappling big things. It should’ve at least scaled to a D12 in the late game imo. Runes are very powerful, but it takes a couple turns to “get going” since triggering several of them requires a Bonus action. Overall I still think the Battle Master is superior when you factor in the new maneuvers at least.
@@FlutesLoot for me I dig the flavor but almost feel like it would’ve been better suited to a Barbarian subclass. “Rage + Get Giant” seems like a more natural fit in my mind at least. Especially since some of the features overlap between rage and GM (strength saves and checks for example). I agree that the thing feels clunky now - I love the Runes but taking a few turns to get them all chugging along in conjunction with the terrible scaling of Giants Might sorta killed the subclass for me.
Some of these sounds like fun ideas, but would probably be pretty weak in practice. In general, barbarian does not mix with spellcasters. Being unable to concentrate and cast spells is a big deal. Some very careful moon druid builds might work. A 1 level dip to peace cleric can work if you have the wisdom. I don't think Armor of Agathyst builds are very good, because spending your first action in some combats just for setup is bad. Also against some enemies, like a dragon, 1 breath attack can take away most or all of the temp hit points, and now you are raging (meaning no spells) and have like 5+ useless levels in spellcasters that you took to have a high spell level for the armor.
I agree that not all concepts are powerhouses, but I've polled over 10k people about why they multiclass, and the majority landed solidly on roleplaying reasons. I try to give suggestions for strong builds but also interesting/new ones for people who want to get weird with a stale game. Regarding Armor of Agathys, it's fine to not like using it, but it lasts an hour, so it doesn't require combat setup.
@@FlutesLoot Regarding Armor of Agathyst, yes, it does last an hour, but you don't always know when combat is coming, and the main threat is not always melee attacks. The problem with it is, it can be quite powerful when it works, but you can also have encounters where you don't get to do your thing, and then you are very far behind, because rage and spellcasting isn't friends. I am not sure how you polled those people, but if they are watchers of your channel, that is not suprissing to get that answer. If Treantmonk polled 10k of his watchers, I suspect he would get a different answer. But you do start the video with saying you will talk best practices. And then proceed suggest something like barbarian 10 / druid 10. At level 20 most other people will have +11 to their attacks, where I think the highest you can swing in any of your forms is 8. Your strongest froms (the elementals) already have resistance to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing, meaning the main feature of rage is redundant. I get you are just spit balling cool ideas here, and the concept is legitemately cool, but I think fair warning to newer players is in order.
@@peterrasmussen4428 I understand questioning the audience of the poll. My poll was on my website, not my channel. The people taking the poll are people who used a search engine and ended up on a multiclassing article that included the poll, and they chose to take the poll during their reading. I've received criticism before that I need to clarify my ideas with context to new players, and I take it to heart and try to communicate when I'm talking about optimization instead of fun ideas. Also, looking back at these early videos makes me cringe haha. Elementals don't resist magical weapon damage like a Barbarian's Rage does, so I wouldn't call it redundant to have resistance to all damage with the Bear Totem except psychic. You also don't always have to be Wildshaped since it's a limited resource. I know of people who use this combination and enjoy it very much, so I don't think I'm misleading anyone by bringing it up. In my experience, one hour is enough heads up for most combat encounters. Even ten minutes is great. I don't consider the duration of Armor of Agathys to be a problem because of my anecdotal experience, haha.
I actually went storm herald ruin knight muliclass because I like the way the saving throw is the same stats dc saving throw the enemy needs to make I say my character is a a half orc and he believes he gets his power from the giants he believes they are / have the same power of a god
IMO barbs are best as a dip class. the latter barb levels dont offer much neither do the subclass. i'd say level 2 is the minimum as the best barb ability is reckless attack. the number of rages though at level 2 is too few for my taste so taking it up to 3 is fine for a subclass ability and 3 rages. taking it to 4 is typically the max for an extra asi. some barb subclasses may be worth taking up to 6-8. like ancestral guardian is good for tank builds. beast is good for multi-hit strikers while zealot is for single-hit strikers. if you really want to main class a barb and starting at higher level, there's only a couple with good level 14 abilities which are zealot and the wild magic barb. the wild magic barb though will be dreadful until you can get that ability to choose your surges. Even if you want to play a main barb, it's really best to dip elsewhere to supplement what they have like fighter for action surge, gloomstalker for dread ambusher, etc. one last thing to note here, is don't be afraid to multiclass a barb with a spellcaster. as long as the caster has long duration buffs (1 hr+) or summons you can spend your spell slots on (armor of agathys, tiny servant) or ways to use your spell slots in combat but not casting a spell (combat wild shape, smites), it's worth it as long as you get useful abilities (like a level 2 war wizard dip).
@@FlutesLoot my notes though is how can a barb whos always raging still make use of spells/spell slots that makes multiclassing with a caster worth it.
Not really milticlass. Go Vedalken for advantage on charisma, wisdom and intelligence saves. Eventually you end up with a Barbarian with advantage on all saves they can see while raging, except constitution. With a one hour underwater breathing and 1d4 on one skill, say athletics. You can achieve something similar against magic effects with Yuan-ti, Satyr or Gnomes. I think people mentioned the Psychic resistance from emerald gem dragons. Which I might add can technically do their breath weapon in druid form. Which brings us to the mainly druid multiclass. The Moon Druid totem barbearian. The unarmored defense stacks with the stats of the beast you transform into, and multi attacks works with reckless attacks. The boring Crit Fisher Barbarian champion, that Crits on 19 and 20, but can also benefit from some fighting styles like thrown weapon, or forgot unarmored defense and don a halfplate with armored fighting style. It is unfortunate that great weapon fighting is mediocre at best.
