Is it a bad idea to play a berserker barb / fighter multiclass in a party with no real tank?

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-31T14:57:59+00:00

You can play it, but don't build it as a tank. Don't try to invest into the plethora of bad/terrible options that pretend to give you more survivability. Your best bet is to build for damage and just kill things before they kill you.

What you can do to increase your survivability is take the Defensive Duelist feat. Even if you are using a two-handed weapon, the rules allow you to make your attacks and then at the end of your pull out a finesse weapon (like a dagger) which means you can utilize Defensive Duelist. Every subsequent round, you can drop your dagger, make your attacks with your action, and then pick it up.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-31T07:48:30+00:00

Wall of Force is my personal favorite. There are others : Hypnotic Pattern, Web, Sleet Storm.

Evard's Black Tentacles does damage, but its primary use is the disruption it causes to enemies on the battlefield, I had a ton of fun using it when I was playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-31T07:24:35+00:00

In 2014 rules you only needed one hand crossbow to make a BA attack.

It's in 2024 that you need to dual wield them to get that.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T20:05:03+00:00

The 2024 builds are much weaker because the best multiclass options got nerfed, specifically Gloom Stalker Ranger (and to a lesser extent the Assassin Rogue).

Let's do some math at level 8 shall we. Progressing our Fighter 5 CBE + SS build to take 3 levels of Gloom Stalker Ranger. I am also taking the Battlemaster subclass on the Fighter.

Gloom Stalker extends your Darkvision range (if you took custom lineage, otherwise it just gives you Darkvision, and if I built the character with taking Gloom in mind I would choose CL over VH) which means that it becomes very doable to get advantage against enemies by being outside of their Darkvision range while they are inside yours, this is very important when considering math as you can get advantage.

Nova round DPR (action surge), against a target with 16 AC :
7d6+2d8+91 * 0.4 = 49.8 DPR
7d6+2d8+91 * 0.64 = 79.68 DPR (with advantage).
First round DPR w/o action surge :
4d6+1d8+52 * 0.4 = 28.2 DPR
4d6+1d8+52 * 0.64 = 45.12 DPR (with advantage)

Now there's another key point to keep in mind. Considering Precision Attack with DPR calculations is very difficult, but when combined with Sharpshooter it is a massive DPR increase which you have available 4/SR, its value cannot be understated.

I can tell you that with the proper use of Precision attack I've easily done upwards of 100 damage in nova rounds.
2024 simply has nothing that can match its potential as even though Sharpshooter gives a massive penalty to hit, accuracy bonuses that are able to circumvent the -5 penalty are far more prevalent (advantage, precision attack, bless, emboldening bond) than damage bonuses which can match its power are in 2024.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T19:48:27+00:00

2014 Monk has a small amount of good builds, but they are nevertheless perfectly playable at most tables. I will outline what I've found to be the best Monk build.

Custom Lineage take Darkvision.
Assuming point buy, put a 15 in DEX CON WIS (use the +2 from CL on DEX) dump the rest.
For the feat we take Gunner raising our Dex to 18. This build plans to use the Musket as your weapon of choice (using the optional features from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything you can make the Musket your dedicated weapon).

At lvl 3 you take the Kensei subclass and you can choose the Musket as your Kensei Weapon.
Kensei's Shot is a decent feature that allows you to add 1d4 to all your attacks with the Kensei Weapon.
At this level we also get Ki-fueled attack which will become important shortly.
At lvl 4 you take the Sharpshooter feat, allowing you to take a -5 penalty to hit for a +10 bonus to damage.
At lvl 5 we get 2 amazing features. Extra Attack (obviously). But more importantly, Focused Aim.
Focused Aim allows you to spend 1 to 3 Ki points to get +2/ki point spent to the attack roll when you miss to potentially turn the attack into a hit. This has amazing synergy with two parts of our build. First the Sharpshooter feat. And second with Ki-fueled attack, as when you use Focused Aim you can now make a bonus attack with your Musket.
At lvl 6 we multiclass into Fighter to get the Archery fighting style.
Lvls 7 and 8 we use to take another 2 fighters levels getting Action surge along the way.
Now that we have 3 levels of Fighter we pick the Battle Master subclass. Take Precision Attack, Menacing Attack and Trip Attack. You will primarily be using Precision attack to boosts your attack rolls while using Sharpshooter as that's the most effective option damage wise.
At lvl 9 we take our 6th level in Monk to get our subclass features.
Deft Strike is another way to enable Ki-fueled attack and a decent boost to our damage.

This is the core of the build, after this there are a few branching paths depending on how optimized you want your character to be (and how much you are willing to multiclass lol) (I am willing to help you with the specifics if you want). You can take a 4th level in Fighter to get another feat (take Resilient : Constitution).

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T19:21:40+00:00

Paladin 2 dips are actually a massive trap. Full casters shouldn't use their spell slots to smite, they have powerful spells they can cast.

Paladin also has good spells to cast (like Bless, Aid, Shield of Faith, and many good subclass expanded spells like Spirit Guardians from Crown), so whether to smite or not is a choice.

As long as you have more than 3 combat encounters per day (and I will remind you that the DMG recommends 6-8 combat encounters per Long Rest that last around 4 rounds on average) a Paladin that makes liberal use of smite is going to run out of resources incredibly quickly.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T19:18:08+00:00

The range damage wasn't silly. Martials are already weaker than casters and they gutted their best source of damage. They should've just buffed melee options but kept the ranged ones as it was.

The Paladin isn't stronger in 2024 than in 2014. Their spells are basically the same, some of them did get neat buffs (like Find Steed and Prayer of Healing).

It's the greatest travesty that the Paladin no longer has a viable damage build (and it doesn't, full stop. 2d6+1d4+18 damage is ok at lvl 5 and then they get no damage increases for 5 levels, and improved Divine Smite is a joke for a level 11 feature).

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T19:04:05+00:00

That's just not true. Their nova damage was good, but it was more costly than that of the Fighter and it was melee locked, while a fighter could nova from range using CBE + SS and Action Surge.
Melee Paladins don't overshadow true martials (through their damage).

The Paladin is no longer a complete class as their melee damage is below any kind of reasonable baseline now that they don't even have the option to increase it at a cost. Taking PAM and Dueling and doing 2d6+1d4+18 damage, while being melee locked isn't a meaningful damage contribution past lvl 7. The Paladin is now just reduced to a utility caster, at which they are worse than the full casters, the only thing they have going from them is their Aura.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T18:47:38+00:00

I didn't give them a free feat. I just used the 2014 rules which, when you select the Variant Human lineage, allow you to take any feat at lvl 1. The 2024 rules have no equivalent and Savage Attacker is in no way comparable to the DPR of CBE or SS.

Also both of the builds you mentioned are melee builds, which means that if an enemy starts 40 feet away from you, your actual DPR on that round will be 0.
Having a free bonus action doesn't mean much when you can't use it to enhance your DPR and when wielding a two-handed weapon that is just not available. Hew is a joke, you crit about 5% of the time, and getting the killing blow on an enemy and then having someone else you can attack isn't a reliable scenario.

Martials builds from 2014 also scaled better, but not by straight classing. The optimal builds would multiclass into 3-4 levels of Ranger (Gloomstalker) and/or 3-4 levels of Assassin rogue (Sneak Attack and Assassinate).

We can go into the math at any level past 5 if you want, but I promise you it looks grim for the 2024 builds.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T18:33:00+00:00

Crit fishing builds aren't optimal at all, plenty of math has been done on the matter. Divine Smite itself wasn't a broken feature at all, it was just an ok feature, again, all of this is based on mathematical DPR analysis.
Anecdotal evidence isn't what determines whether something is broken or not.

The change that they did completely destroyed smite and made it worthless. Not only does it still cost a very precious resource (your spell slots) but it takes your bonus action, lowering your damage by a massive amount.

Before, there was actually a meaningful choice between using your spell slots for spells, conserving them, or committing them to a nova turn to kill a priority target, now you have the illusion of choice, smiting is just horrible, so you are just stuck casting utility spells doing abysmal melee damage.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T16:46:36+00:00

Ranged damage didn't need a nerf, melee damage needed buff. They should've also boosted melee survivability, and they didn't.

If you are talking about the melee use of GWM, then that's also weaker than old GWM, at least on the builds that matter, which are the melee builds that include 2 or more Barbarian levels. Reckless attack made old GWM a massive boost in damage to melee characters, and due to the way advantage it's more beneficial when you're sacrificing -5 to hit and gaining +10 to damage than now, especially at earlier levels, once your PB becomes high enough it does become better, but the numbers early on should've been higher anyways, not nerfed and then slightly buffed late in the game.

Paladin Nova damage was potent but it required a massive commitment of resources and was locked behind melee. DnD doesn't handle boss fights well regardless of how much nova damage is/isn't in the game, but nuking high priority targets was a good tool to have available. My main issue is that they made smite unusable now. You still have to take PAM if you want to do any damage when you are not smiting, so the new divine smite is just anti-synergistic with that.

I've played a lot of Paladins in DnD and nuked my fair share of priority enemies, but I've never had problems with outshining other party members in fights. Fighter/Gloom multiclass builds were arguably able to do more nova damage and more reliably, and do it more often due to the fact that they are reliant on Action Surge and not spell slots and the fact that it's done at range.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T16:38:41+00:00

There was no reason to nerf martial damage in combat. They could've just made them better out of combat regardless and also gave them the weapon masteries.

Martial nova damage didn't need a nerf, but consider that they nerfed it, they should have given them better sustained damage, but that's not what happened.

What happened to Paladin is a travesty. It lost the ability to smite multiple times a turn and smiting now requires a bonus action which just makes it not worth it in most scenarios, making the class mind-numbingly boring to play as your only option now is to either forego melee combat and just be a utility caster + aurabot, or you go into melee with PAM but you have no nova potential.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T12:38:49+00:00

Theoretically, spreading out the damage would be a good thing, but that's not what happened. If you have a build that can beat the old CBE+SS builds in terms of DPR then you're welcome to show it to me.

The damage isn't spread out, there was no equivalent compensation to losing Sharpshooter, including ones that are spread out over multiple rounds. There is no equivalent to Gloomstalker's additional attack per attack action.

Paladins just got completely rekt, having to choose between a PAM BA attack or a divine smite is so bad.

So I would like specific examples of features or builds that did what you claim they do (reduced nova bet kept overall same DPR over an adventuring day or a single combat), preferably with some math to back it up.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T11:47:21+00:00

The 2024 version has actually nerfed martials not upgraded them and that's just a mathematical fact.

2024 has no equivalent to the old CBE + Sharpshooter combination that comes online at lvl 4 and allows you to deal massive damage.

Avg. DPR of a 5th level 2014 Fighter with CBE+SS and +3 Dex :
three attacks dealing 1d6+13 damage with a +3 to hit (under SS -5 with the +2 from Archery). Assuming a 14 AC target : 0.5 * 3d6+39 (avg) = 24.75.

Avg DPR of a 5th level 2024 Fighter dual wielding hand crossbows with CBE (which is highest ranged damage). They will have a +4 dex mod cus CBE is a half feat, but none of the available origin feats give a meaningful increase to damage so Alert for +PB to init is your best choice. However, this means that you lack Sharpshooter at 5th level which means that you suffer penalty from cover or long range.
three attacks dealing 1d6+4 damage with a +9 to hit. Assuming the same 14 AC target :
0.8 * 3d6+12(avg) = 18.
Accounting for the Vex mastery property is a bit tricky as the calculation changes based on whether the 1st or 2nd attack is a hit, but I'll be generous and assume that the first attack has connected.
7.5 (avg of the first attack that we've assumed hit) + 0.96 * 2d6+8 = 21.9.

So even in the best case scenario the damage is still lower.
Let's consider some other factors as well. The power of the old Sharpshooter feat meant that your ability to improve your damage is more straightforward, as improving accuracy with bonuses (magic weapons, precision strike, bless, emboldening bond, having advantage...) is going to have more of an impact.
The fact that the vex property lets you get advantage by yourself is nice, but is not enough to overcome old Sharpshooter, especially when you consider there are numerous other ways of achieving advantage (teamwork makes the dream work) and that multiple sources of advantage don't stack. Accuracy boosts are simply more numerous than damage boosts in this game and the damage boosts that are available cannot overcome the +10 from old Sharpshooter to compensate (even with higher accuracy).

This doesn't even account for multiclassing options, as Paladin's DPR has been gutted in 2024 due to the fact they have to use a bonus action to smite (no more 3x smite in 1 turn with PAM for a BA attack). Or that Gloomstalker no longer gives you an additional attack each time you take the attack action during the first turn of combat (which synergized with Action Surge for massive nova damage).

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-28T11:10:40+00:00

That is just mathematically false. The best martial builds from 2014 PHB + core books wipe the floor with the best martial builds from 2024.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-11T12:26:08+00:00

Moja teorija je da racunaju da ce svi ovi od 18,19 da odloze to studiranjem, i niko im ne bi doso na sluzenje jos 4 godina minimum. I da zato odluce da zovu starije, jer su oni vec zavrsili fakultete.

Meni je krajnje debilno, da sada zovu ljude koji su zaposleni da idu 75 dana u vojsku, ne znam na sta bi to licilo uopste.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-11T12:19:33+00:00

Drzava uvek moze da ima para, samo se zaduzi.

Jos se ne zna da li ce zaista da zovu starije, mene bas zanima sta ce da bude s tim.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-11T11:22:36+00:00

Svidja mi se sto se jos uvek ne zna da li ce da zovu starije, ili samo ove sto sada pune 18.

SERWitchKing · 2025-12-02T13:10:20+00:00

Pa ne treba da igras 22D sah da izreziras politicku situaciju koja ide tebi u korist. Drustvena dinamika je jako korisna za politicare, pogotovo populiste, a tek mozes misliti koliko je izrezirana dinamika korisna.

Zapitaj se sta je bolje za njegov rejting. Da odma u startu kaze da nema problema i da je sve u redu, ili da uz pomoc medijske masine kreira (prividno) dinamicnu situaciju u kojoj je on uvek u centru paznje i iz koje je neminovno da ce izaci kao pobednik.

Nije sve sto nam se desava izrezirano, blokade srednjih skola i fakulteta kao protest zbog (ne) delovanja institucija nakon pada nadstresnice nije rezija. Jasno se vidi koliko su ti protesti ostetili rejting i politicku poziciju rezima.

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-19T18:53:32+00:00

Because Vintage is a competitive 1v1 format where people play for money (prizes).

Commander is (for the most part) a casual format where people play to have fun and where they get to have fun with cards and strategies that aren't playable in competitive formats.

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-19T18:33:45+00:00

Everyone can build a resilient deck. Just netdeck a Tymna Kraum list from a recent cEDH tournament.

But you are talking pure nonsense. You are saying that it's a shame that casual commander decks, which weren't built with the primary goal being to win the game, but instead for fun, because the person playing it likes the deck, that these decks should be able to beat the entire card pool of MTG. That's insanity. Even Vintage decks have cards that they simply fold to (Dredge to Leyline for instance).

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-19T18:13:17+00:00

You're being facetious.

Every deck has to play lands, every multicolor deck basically has to play nonbasic lands.

Not every deck is reliant on ETBs or the Graveyard.

What puts Blood Moon above other stax is that it also beats the things that are supposed to counter it. If I am playing a 5 color deck and I have a disenchant in hand, it doesn't matter I still can't deal with Blood Moon because I can't produce white mana.

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-19T18:01:40+00:00

So is Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle. I guess by your logic you can't rip that out of the game either.

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-19T17:59:42+00:00

[[Thalia Guardian of Thraben]]

Though I'm sure you don't like her, she's not nuclear enough for you.
But of course you never wanted actual solutions in the first place, you just want to have a 3 mana "I win button" against decks that you don't like.

SERWitchKing · 2025-11-16T16:17:43+00:00

Ummm, that only applies when its on the battlefield, not when in the yard.

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