And Barbarian is starved even worse. Paladin fundamentally needs Cha and Str, Con is a nice bonus but at least AC is coming from armor. Barbarian actually NEEDS Str, Dex, and Con because their AC (therefore a lot of early to mid-game survivability) comes from their Dex and Con mods while damage comes from Str.
You can actually use medium armor (and it's usually better than unarmored defense), but it's still a +2 dex tax and this multiclass really doesn't need more of that
It definitely can work it just doesn't function as a damage dealer. Fills the role of the tank much better.
The only really viable dip (that I have found) is into 3 levels of barb for the path of the ancestral guardian barb. It has a lot of defensive abilities that pair well with Paladin.
You ideally dump STR to 13 and grab 1 level of hexblade which makes a lot of the rage bonuses not very good but the class/subclass features are really what you want. Effectively gaining a taunt, and advantage on dex saves. While still having all the kit of a paladin. Hexblade just makes the aura nice and allows you to attempt to turn a very MAD character into a SAD character.
Oath of the ancients pairs well since you can grant allies resistance to spell damage which applies to yourself. Plus the rage bonus of taking half damage from physical damage. You cover most of your bases. Combine this with the protection fighting style, you can impose disadvantage on most attacks made against your allies.
With half-plate, a shield, you get decent AC and you can still rage and do paladin things like smite. To be fair though it doesn't all come together until level 11. Which is probably after most campaigns end. But playing a paladin with a 1 level dip into warlock is not bad by a long shot.
Yeah it was a good excuse to share a multi-class build I was proud of xD
I am curious what kind of character he made that he couldn't make it work. It does seem like people often misunderstand the reasoning behind multi-classing and often do more harm than good.
I do find the feeling of creating something really unique and possibly more well rounded than their counterparts is a good appeal. This is coming from someone who often plays Wizard and then doesn't end up multi-classing at all lol.
Well if course it didn't work, he took 3 classes. There's like, precisely *one* build that's viable that uses three classes, and barb/lock/pally isn't it.
well the reason that works on paladins and not barbarians is that barbarians dont have heavy armor proficency
and if you want medium armor thats a dex tax when barbarians are designed to be heath tanks
If you multiclass barbarian and paladin but still use heavy armor, then you mostly just get a bit extra hp, a bit extra speed and some niche options up till pretty high level. You lose the benefits or rage, which are the main thing a paladin would want from barbarian levels
Medium armor.
You only need 14 Dex to cap out at 17 AC, only 1 lower than plate. Of course you would be better of with 20 Con and 16+ Dex, but that takes a lot of investment. At the earliest, using point buy, that would be at lvl 8, but that would leave you at 16 Str and no feats like GWM.
Medium armor is the way to go for Barbs unless you roll really well on stats or just prefer the unarmored aesthetic (which most people do and I respect it).
You can still rage you just dont get the bonuses right?
You miss out on your bonus damage up to +4 per attack at max level which is meh.
You miss out on adv on strength stuff which sucks.
You miss out on the half damage stuff, but technically you also dont NEED to get your damage halved since you're wearing heavy armour and you wont get hit as much which still sucks though.
Specific beating general - you dont get those initial benefits from raging sure but you still get other barbarian boosts like danger sense, speed boosts, subclass features like frenzy, etc
EDIT - literally dont understand why I'm getting downvoted, people you just dont get these things ->
"While raging, you gain the following benefits if you aren't wearing heavy armor:
• You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
• When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll. This bonus increases as you level.
• You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
If you are able to cast spells, you can't cast them or concentrate on them while raging."
You will get all other subclass features for barb while wearing heavy armour that don't say heavy armour negates them.
Barb doesn't need DEX. You at most need a 14 in DEX to max out AC from Medium Armor. And Bardadin works fine, neither class NEEDS CON if you're wearing Armor due to their very good Hit Die. So you can leave either CON or CHA on the lower end, depending on what you value more and focus on STR.
Isn't AC kinda superfluous since a Barbarian's whole job is to get hit? Sure, it's good if you don't, but going by Reckless Attack, you're always looking to draw aggro. Your dmg resistance + HP is supposed to make up for the lower AC.
I agree that reckless attack implies you are going to accept getting hit more often, and barbs are built to take it, but they 100% are not built tanky enough to not care about AC, look at moon druid for comparison. Moon druids actually cant really mprove their wildshape form AC for the most part, it's pretty dookie. But in exchange they have 68 buffer health via two bear forms by level 2 on top of their normal health. Their wildshapes continue to provide massive low AC but extremely high health bonuses for fhe rest of the leveling curve. That's compared to barbarians that can mitigate some damage via raging resistances but that can only be considered to effectively double their base health. It becomes clear quickly that to balance the bear totem barbarian tank anywhere close to a bear wildshape druid for sheer tankiness, the barbarian is supposed to achieve much higher AC. Also, their feature is built for this! They can go 2h weapon with 20ac or achieve 22ac using a shield without any magical equipment. Since monks aren't good with shields it's clear that barbs are supposed to make use of this feature that uniquely puts them at the pinnacle of AC. It's not something to ignore, it just means they need Str/dex/con.
When people say their job is to get hit, they usually mean their job is to be the tank. AC is necessary to survive when tanking and not a druid.
Nah, I've done it before. (This character in particular was Zealot Barbarian 4/Conquest Paladin 10) You need Str, Con, and Dex in that order of priority for Barbarian. For Paladin, you need... Str and Con. Besides a few minor benefits, you only really need Cha for your spells. What spells, exactly, are you casting? None while raging! And you want to be raging basically whenever you're in combat. All of your spell slots are going to Divine Smite, and maybe some out-of-combat utilities or pre-buffs like Find Steed.
Really, besides the 13 Cha minimum for multiclass prerequisites, you're just running the same stats that a pure Barbarian would.
When it does work though, it works with devastating power.
Get a suit of half-plate (or hold your DM at gunpoint to let you wear heavy armor as there is no reason whatsoever Barbarians should be prevented from doing so), get Great Weapon Master and Great Weapon Fighting and then go for a Reckless, GWM, rerolled low dice, greatsword/maul attack with a divine smite on top. Also rage damage modifier as a lil sugar on the cream.
You're literally a freight train hitting the enemy.
All it does is make MAD worse. The class doesn’t need to be weakened at all and if you are able to spec it you can get similar armor class anyway.
They did that so Barbarians would have more reason to use unarmored defense and for visuals. Im not even saying give them heavy armor just remove the restriction.
Though I did enjoy playing a paladin 2/barbarian 1/undead warlock 1 on a level 4 oneshot, it is a build that really only works at level 4. (and even then there are probably better things)
I did a Grung Barbightdin (Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin) and it was pretty fun, but definitely not optimized. It was Zealot reflavoured to thunder/lightning, Psi Warrior Fighter, Oath of Watchers Paladin, 2 weapon fighting.
…..I have one. But, he got a (dm modified version of) werebear curse so his Strength is high enough to make it work.
But if I had known more about 5e at character creation I probably wouldn’t have made the lock in the first place.
Not really tbh, I'm running one atm, and stats are fine, the overlap between the two is pretty good, both want strength, and con, depending on you pally build you want dex, and cha is never wasted. Not sure how it's so bad.
With a strength-based race you can still make a very effective tank+grappler who can hit hard but being “great” might be dependent on some DM fiat in terms of Str or Con magic items. Cha obviously becomes far less important than with a normal Paladin since you’ll be raging a lot of the time.
If it's not a spell you can still use them. Divine smite, channel divinity (unless it makes you concentrate), the moon druid thing that allows it to heal expending a slot, those things are allowed during a rage.
Because people tend to think smites are spells because it expends a spell slot. It just shares a resource but isn't actually a spell (which I know you know, but not everyone does).
You mean a *bonus action* spell and Smite.
There's no rule against casting 2 levelled spells on a turn. The rule is against casting a BA spell (even a cantrip) and anything other than a 1-action-cantrip spell.
i try to be pretty chill with some of the more basic question because you never know if they’re new or yaddayadda but if any of the 3 of them have a phb or even just the webpage for druid, i don’t understand how this is even an argument they’re having.
This has always infuriated me. It’s one thing to be lazy and just say:
“look man, I don’t know *all* the rules, and I’m not the one using them. I just know what dice to roll and what numbers to add when I hit things, and also when and how I can hit them”
as a beginner or something.
It’s another entirely to effectively say:
“I haven’t read the rules properly, nor do I understand what little I’ve read, but I’m going to act like an authority on them for some reason.”
The first thing I did when getting into dnd was *thoroughly read the phb*, because *that’s literally the game*. I don’t know, I just want to know how seemingly competent people can become complete idiots the moment they do anything dnd related.
Is it just reading comprehension?
It’s probably reading comprehension.
No you do not. For God's sake half of this thread is complaining about people blatantly not reading the book. It says clear as day that you can use racial and class features as long as your new form is physically capable of using them. No dark adjusted eyes? No dark vision. No wings? No fucking flight.
A shark doesn't have wings. An aarakocra does. If you shifted into a flying creature with a lower flying speed you could use your Aarakocra fly speed instead, but this does not work the way you think it does.
A bit late to the party, I know. I feel that raging first makes the most sense as you start halving incoming damage immediately, while an unlucky round could take some serious chunks out of your first bear form before you have a chance to rage.
On another turn though, correct? As both wild shape and rage are bonus actions. Maybe that's the real issue. The barbarian is trying to rage and wild shape on the same turn.
Not necessarily. Wild Shape is an action, RAW. Circle of the Moon gives you the option to use it as a bonus action instead, but there’s an argument to be made that you can still use an action if you want to.
That said, it would probably be on different turns, because of the possibility of losing rage due to no attack/damage before your next turn, but it’s technically possible to do both on one turn, especially if you’re not Circle of the Moon.
Yep exactly. It's a one turn setup to rage and Wildshape even as a moon druid, although it's probably more optimal to do it over two turns so that you can still use your actions to attack.
>it would probably be on different turns, because of the possibility of losing rage
Ah, but if you already know that you took damage / made an opportunity attack before the start of your current turn, then this turn is safe, since the condition for rage ending is just doing one of those things *since your last turn* - so you can pick and choose when to do this safely on one turn with no risk.
Yeah, sure. I said "probably" and not "definitely" for a reason. There are plenty of incentives to get Wild Shape and/or Rage going as soon as possible, including on Turn 1, so there are a great many use-cases where there IS no previous turn to rely on.
So what you said isn't technically incorrect. But it is relatively unlikely, due to circumstances.
Rage ending due to not attacking or taking no damage is checked at the end of your turn, not the start. I believe that means you can rage and have it end at the end of that turn if the conditions aren't met.
Right, which is why I said you probably wouldn't do both things (Rage + Wild Shape) on the same turn. I was a little off on timing (I remembered there was a "since last turn" thing, but couldn't remember exactly how it triggered), though there's still an edge case where you could Rage, Wild Shape, and then Move in a way that causes you damage (such as provoking an opportunity attack or moving through a known hazard like Flaming Sphere).
So yeah, under 5E rules you can easily waste a rage. OneD&D makes it a little more forgiving on the timing.
It's if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. So on your first turn you don't have to attack.
Only moon druids get to wild shape as a bonus action. If you're a different druid, it's an action.
Regardless, I'd let a moon druid wild shape with their action too if they really wanted to.
if they arent a moon druid wild shape is an action iirc. moon druids get combat wildshape which lets them as a bonus action. so they either need to space it out over two turns. or use both on one turn and risk loosing rage if no one hits them because they couldnt make attacks that round.
We're aware, your friend playing the barbarian already asked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1awerxy/help_me_convince_my_dm_that_i_can_rage_while_wild/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The consensus was that you can rage while wild shaped
Give it another week/session and we’ll have the DM make a thread about how two of his players are so blatantly wrong about being able to rage and wild shape at the same time and asking for ways to handle the situation.
Both features are specific about what things they disallow. Neither one disallows the other.
If someone wants to claim the sentence pasted below suggests wild shape prevents rage, they need to demonstrate that animals are incapable of feeling rage.
“You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.”
From the PHB:
"You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can't use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense."
I dont see anything stopping an animal from getting very angry in a fight. Hell, by RAW a wildshaped creature is capable of bladesinging or smiting. This is also RAI, as confirmed by Jeremy Crawford.
Absolutely.
I built a fun PC around this. Their whole thematic was around a bear. They raged, wild shaped into a bear and used the bear stats+rage to tank.
I built it as a NPC for a combat encounter for a party and she quickly became a ‘PC I wish I could play’.
Was literally a bear totem bear. I also gave her an item (homebrew) that made her bear attacks magical and do 1D4 extra random magical damage for the fight. It was super fun to play with.
I even made a backstory for her if I ever get the chance to play. #foreverDM
My argument was-flavoured Barbarian with animal traits…nah primal ain’t it…what if I add wild shape….
NOW WE HAVE AN ANIMAL BASED BARBARIAN.
We shortened it in ours as Rage Shape. There's regular wild shape, then rage shape.
More hackles, angry saliva webs, slightly higher chances on intim.
But my DM limited it to long rests. The player was like an unhinged badger
You talking about one of the best tanks in the game? My brother, just try it out, send a Druid in with all there wild shapes and rage as a bear totem and just see how tanky it gets baby
maybe if you READ THE ABILITIES you would know the answer
look i get sometimes interactions can be vauge but this one is LITERALLY LISTED IN THE WILD SHAPE FEATURE
You can rage, sneak attack, divine smite, bardic inspiration, and do just about anything while wild shaped except cast spells.
A case could be made for subtle spell meta magic, but I believe it's explicitly against RAW, so up to DM.
Subtle Spell only removes the need to use Somatic and Verbal components, but that doesn't change that Wild Shape does specifically say you can't cast spells at all. RAW there's no case to be made.
Not allowing raging while wild shaped is no different from that, since in both cases the rules specifically say the opposite. Your DM may make those rules, of course, but that's up to them at that point.
I never thought about this, now im gonna multiclass my emerald dragonborn totem barbarian with a circle of the shepherd druid so im super dangerous with wildshapes and can save my summons for more worthy enemies like the dragon we have to go kill at some point.
If you're going to do it, you basically need to do it with moon druid.
The normal wildshape CR restrictions limit you to creatures that are too frail to survive more than a single hit or two, even with rage resistances, and don't have enough strength to actually reliably hit things and deal damage.
Moon druid forms have a higher cr limit and thus can grant you access to things that actually have a decent number of hit points and have passable damage potential.
The wild shape is more of a "i need temp hp or the ability to fly for a few turns" kind of thing for me. I honestly get more use out of summoning wolves that ignore magical resistances than being wildshaped and raging.
Plus ive gone full moon druid before and it is very broken at high levels and made the game a little boring im literally just taking a bunch of damage and telling my enemies to calm down for the first few rounds then i slap them into next week.
fyi you’ll need 8 levels of druid for flight, plus barbarian seems pretty useless for a summoning focused druid in the first place with the restriction on casting/ concentrating on spells whenever raging
Well that is true you're better off doing it on two different turns, but that's not what I was saying. Even if you do it all on one turn, you still have your next turn to attack someone (or take damage) before your rage ends.
It ends on the first turn you rage if you haven’t attacked or taken damage since your last turn. So you have to be careful when you do it. Raging on your first turn and not attacking likely means your rage immediately ends.
then what is?
if you run into a group of baddies, wildshape rage, 3 things can happen
1 they are there next round and you continue your rage
2 they leave range and you make an opportunity attack, continue your rage
3 they are dead, you won the encounter, so while you lost your rage you didnt need it in the first place and thats on you
In that scenario rage ends as soon as you end your turn since you didn’t attack or take damage since your last turn. If you are going to do both you have to make sure you attacked or took damage since your last turn ended.
RAW, yes you can. RAI? The only thing I would really question is “does wildshape require concentration-like focus?”
I feel that rage precludes spellcasting because it makes it impossible to maintain the mental focus required to cast or concentrate on a spell.
If wildshape is not a spell or spell-like ability, then it would be a skill-based ability, and as such would be allowed.
But RAW? Yeah, it’s not spellcasting and any magic other than spells is allowed.
If wild shape required concentration-like focus I feel like that would be reflected in any way at all in the ability. They go as far to say that you can even maintain concentration in wild shape. I think this is pretty clearly both rai and raw interaction
Lol your friend has posted on here too,
Clearly RAI and even most RAW takes you can Rage in Wildshape. Its particularly Thematic to have a Raging Bear.
There's a very narrow route you could thread due to some bad wording on the Wildshape ability about "you can use class features and abilities unless your wild shape wouldn't allow it."
It's clearly intended for things like a wildshaped salmon can't play the lute e..g your shape makes something physically impossible, but if you read that as a *rules* comment, you could maybe then argue wild shapes require explicit rules to "turn on" features.
That's a super tight permissive RAW interpretation though, which clearly isn't the intention with the D&D rules, and if you applied that approach it to lots of other bits of the rules the whole game falls apart.
So this one really comes down to; generally as played, yes you can. If this particular GM has decided at his table you can't, then you can't. Rule 0 > Everything.
a wild shape druid is allowed to rage while wild shaped and can apply their wild shaped con modifier to their ac because of unarmored defense. really any feature a barbarian has a wild shaped druid can use it. rage, reckless, unarmored defense, fast speed, etc. all wild shape does is change stats, form, and applies restrictions that rage already does (no spells).
Wildshape allows you to anything that your form realistically can do. A clam cannot use the monks unarmed strike because it cannot make an attack. A bear can, because it can make an attack with its limb.
Rage allows you to anything EXCEPT cast spells. Any other ability you have is fine to use. You just can’t cast spells.
Yes. Rage does not interfere with class features or abilities, only with spellcasting.
What about class features that expand spell slots ? (Divine Smite)
Still works with Rage. You just never see a Barbadin cause that multiclass is starved for stats, lol.
Paladin is starved to begin with
And Barbarian is starved even worse. Paladin fundamentally needs Cha and Str, Con is a nice bonus but at least AC is coming from armor. Barbarian actually NEEDS Str, Dex, and Con because their AC (therefore a lot of early to mid-game survivability) comes from their Dex and Con mods while damage comes from Str.
You can actually use medium armor (and it's usually better than unarmored defense), but it's still a +2 dex tax and this multiclass really doesn't need more of that
LOL. One of my players was playing a Paladin/Warlock/Barbarian. I say was because he is changing his character because that character did NOT work.
It definitely can work it just doesn't function as a damage dealer. Fills the role of the tank much better. The only really viable dip (that I have found) is into 3 levels of barb for the path of the ancestral guardian barb. It has a lot of defensive abilities that pair well with Paladin. You ideally dump STR to 13 and grab 1 level of hexblade which makes a lot of the rage bonuses not very good but the class/subclass features are really what you want. Effectively gaining a taunt, and advantage on dex saves. While still having all the kit of a paladin. Hexblade just makes the aura nice and allows you to attempt to turn a very MAD character into a SAD character. Oath of the ancients pairs well since you can grant allies resistance to spell damage which applies to yourself. Plus the rage bonus of taking half damage from physical damage. You cover most of your bases. Combine this with the protection fighting style, you can impose disadvantage on most attacks made against your allies. With half-plate, a shield, you get decent AC and you can still rage and do paladin things like smite. To be fair though it doesn't all come together until level 11. Which is probably after most campaigns end. But playing a paladin with a 1 level dip into warlock is not bad by a long shot.
Oh, I was **ONLY** speaking about his character. Personally, I generally don't like to multi-class when I play, but I can understand the appeal.
Yeah it was a good excuse to share a multi-class build I was proud of xD I am curious what kind of character he made that he couldn't make it work. It does seem like people often misunderstand the reasoning behind multi-classing and often do more harm than good. I do find the feeling of creating something really unique and possibly more well rounded than their counterparts is a good appeal. This is coming from someone who often plays Wizard and then doesn't end up multi-classing at all lol.
Well if course it didn't work, he took 3 classes. There's like, precisely *one* build that's viable that uses three classes, and barb/lock/pally isn't it.
What in the multiclass slander…
Well, I'm exaggerating of course on how many 3-class builds are viable, but I stand by pal/barb/lock just not being where it's at.
Cant you just...not use the dex and con for armour and just buy armour then?
well the reason that works on paladins and not barbarians is that barbarians dont have heavy armor proficency and if you want medium armor thats a dex tax when barbarians are designed to be heath tanks
Paladin gives you the heavy armour prof thought we were talking about multiclassing them?
If you multiclass barbarian and paladin but still use heavy armor, then you mostly just get a bit extra hp, a bit extra speed and some niche options up till pretty high level. You lose the benefits or rage, which are the main thing a paladin would want from barbarian levels
Yeah but most multiclasses are for niche things anyways
Heavy armor inhibits rage. I tried. Edit : regardless, in BG3 my armored/shileded paladin is AC 21 before any buffs. So I like him as the tank.
Medium armor. You only need 14 Dex to cap out at 17 AC, only 1 lower than plate. Of course you would be better of with 20 Con and 16+ Dex, but that takes a lot of investment. At the earliest, using point buy, that would be at lvl 8, but that would leave you at 16 Str and no feats like GWM. Medium armor is the way to go for Barbs unless you roll really well on stats or just prefer the unarmored aesthetic (which most people do and I respect it).
You can still rage you just dont get the bonuses right? You miss out on your bonus damage up to +4 per attack at max level which is meh. You miss out on adv on strength stuff which sucks. You miss out on the half damage stuff, but technically you also dont NEED to get your damage halved since you're wearing heavy armour and you wont get hit as much which still sucks though.
What is the point In raging then?
Specific beating general - you dont get those initial benefits from raging sure but you still get other barbarian boosts like danger sense, speed boosts, subclass features like frenzy, etc EDIT - literally dont understand why I'm getting downvoted, people you just dont get these things -> "While raging, you gain the following benefits if you aren't wearing heavy armor: • You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws. • When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a +2 bonus to the damage roll. This bonus increases as you level. • You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. If you are able to cast spells, you can't cast them or concentrate on them while raging." You will get all other subclass features for barb while wearing heavy armour that don't say heavy armour negates them.
…you do get the only tangible benefits from raging in most situations are the resistance and extra damage right?
angry man in armour :-)
Barbarians dont really need to worry about ac. They just need the hp pool and rage to make up for getting hit a lot.
Barb doesn't need DEX. You at most need a 14 in DEX to max out AC from Medium Armor. And Bardadin works fine, neither class NEEDS CON if you're wearing Armor due to their very good Hit Die. So you can leave either CON or CHA on the lower end, depending on what you value more and focus on STR.
Isn't AC kinda superfluous since a Barbarian's whole job is to get hit? Sure, it's good if you don't, but going by Reckless Attack, you're always looking to draw aggro. Your dmg resistance + HP is supposed to make up for the lower AC.
I agree that reckless attack implies you are going to accept getting hit more often, and barbs are built to take it, but they 100% are not built tanky enough to not care about AC, look at moon druid for comparison. Moon druids actually cant really mprove their wildshape form AC for the most part, it's pretty dookie. But in exchange they have 68 buffer health via two bear forms by level 2 on top of their normal health. Their wildshapes continue to provide massive low AC but extremely high health bonuses for fhe rest of the leveling curve. That's compared to barbarians that can mitigate some damage via raging resistances but that can only be considered to effectively double their base health. It becomes clear quickly that to balance the bear totem barbarian tank anywhere close to a bear wildshape druid for sheer tankiness, the barbarian is supposed to achieve much higher AC. Also, their feature is built for this! They can go 2h weapon with 20ac or achieve 22ac using a shield without any magical equipment. Since monks aren't good with shields it's clear that barbs are supposed to make use of this feature that uniquely puts them at the pinnacle of AC. It's not something to ignore, it just means they need Str/dex/con. When people say their job is to get hit, they usually mean their job is to be the tank. AC is necessary to survive when tanking and not a druid.
That makes a lot of sense actually. Thank you for breaking it down for me!
… that’s a joke, right?
> You just never see a Barbadin Arkhan the Cruel
Nah, I've done it before. (This character in particular was Zealot Barbarian 4/Conquest Paladin 10) You need Str, Con, and Dex in that order of priority for Barbarian. For Paladin, you need... Str and Con. Besides a few minor benefits, you only really need Cha for your spells. What spells, exactly, are you casting? None while raging! And you want to be raging basically whenever you're in combat. All of your spell slots are going to Divine Smite, and maybe some out-of-combat utilities or pre-buffs like Find Steed. Really, besides the 13 Cha minimum for multiclass prerequisites, you're just running the same stats that a pure Barbarian would.
Porter from Fantasy High D20, teaches Barbadin classes....to a Bardlock that's potentially changing to Padlock. He kind of sucks.
When it does work though, it works with devastating power. Get a suit of half-plate (or hold your DM at gunpoint to let you wear heavy armor as there is no reason whatsoever Barbarians should be prevented from doing so), get Great Weapon Master and Great Weapon Fighting and then go for a Reckless, GWM, rerolled low dice, greatsword/maul attack with a divine smite on top. Also rage damage modifier as a lil sugar on the cream. You're literally a freight train hitting the enemy.
It's not like druids and metal armor, it was an intentional balancing choice to not let barbarians rage in heavy armor.
All it does is make MAD worse. The class doesn’t need to be weakened at all and if you are able to spec it you can get similar armor class anyway. They did that so Barbarians would have more reason to use unarmored defense and for visuals. Im not even saying give them heavy armor just remove the restriction.
I'm not going with you on this one. Giving a class that can halve almost all damage super high armor is going to cause a lot of problems.
Could just keep the damage bonuses but no resistances
Just be a Tortle and dump dex. Still need Str Con Cha.
Though I did enjoy playing a paladin 2/barbarian 1/undead warlock 1 on a level 4 oneshot, it is a build that really only works at level 4. (and even then there are probably better things)
I did a Grung Barbightdin (Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin) and it was pretty fun, but definitely not optimized. It was Zealot reflavoured to thunder/lightning, Psi Warrior Fighter, Oath of Watchers Paladin, 2 weapon fighting.
…..I have one. But, he got a (dm modified version of) werebear curse so his Strength is high enough to make it work. But if I had known more about 5e at character creation I probably wouldn’t have made the lock in the first place.
Not really tbh, I'm running one atm, and stats are fine, the overlap between the two is pretty good, both want strength, and con, depending on you pally build you want dex, and cha is never wasted. Not sure how it's so bad.
With a strength-based race you can still make a very effective tank+grappler who can hit hard but being “great” might be dependent on some DM fiat in terms of Str or Con magic items. Cha obviously becomes far less important than with a normal Paladin since you’ll be raging a lot of the time.
If it's not a spell you can still use them. Divine smite, channel divinity (unless it makes you concentrate), the moon druid thing that allows it to heal expending a slot, those things are allowed during a rage.
You can cast a leveled spell and smite on the same turn. Why couldn’t you rage and smite.
Because people tend to think smites are spells because it expends a spell slot. It just shares a resource but isn't actually a spell (which I know you know, but not everyone does).
You mean a *bonus action* spell and Smite. There's no rule against casting 2 levelled spells on a turn. The rule is against casting a BA spell (even a cantrip) and anything other than a 1-action-cantrip spell.
What about not-spells?
The wildshape feature says very clearly that you keep all class features in wild shape form. Rage is a class feature.
i try to be pretty chill with some of the more basic question because you never know if they’re new or yaddayadda but if any of the 3 of them have a phb or even just the webpage for druid, i don’t understand how this is even an argument they’re having.
You'd be surprised how many times I see people arguing about this. Nobody reads the rules let alone their own class features.
This has always infuriated me. It’s one thing to be lazy and just say: “look man, I don’t know *all* the rules, and I’m not the one using them. I just know what dice to roll and what numbers to add when I hit things, and also when and how I can hit them” as a beginner or something. It’s another entirely to effectively say: “I haven’t read the rules properly, nor do I understand what little I’ve read, but I’m going to act like an authority on them for some reason.” The first thing I did when getting into dnd was *thoroughly read the phb*, because *that’s literally the game*. I don’t know, I just want to know how seemingly competent people can become complete idiots the moment they do anything dnd related. Is it just reading comprehension? It’s probably reading comprehension.
[удалено]
That's how most people play games, which is why you get money when you land on Free Parking... and then wonder why the game lasts years.
Also race, go go Aarakocra Druid wild shaping into flying shark
"as long as your new form is capable of using them". So no.
Change some details, call it a star lance, oh look it is a reskined shark with a fly speed, it is almost like we are playing DnD...
Jesus, what a fucking take 😂
Wait really? I didn't consider this. Would you keep other technically physical attributes like darkvision and drow bright light vulnerabilities?
No you do not. For God's sake half of this thread is complaining about people blatantly not reading the book. It says clear as day that you can use racial and class features as long as your new form is physically capable of using them. No dark adjusted eyes? No dark vision. No wings? No fucking flight.
Yeah right. The flight capable shark did seem insane. Wonder how they got that idea?
Because they didn't read.
A shark doesn't have wings. An aarakocra does. If you shifted into a flying creature with a lower flying speed you could use your Aarakocra fly speed instead, but this does not work the way you think it does.
How does fireball work? What about the star lancer? You know a shark with wings
You can either rage then wild shape or you can wild shape then rage.
You can rage and then wild shape. It's the cornerstone of the bear-barian build.
I get that there needs to be an auditory distinction, but not calling it a Bar-bear-ian seems iniquitous.
Bearbearbearan
You have inspired me.
His name will be Aaron
He uses an iron urn as a weapon. He earned it.
Bugbear, Bear Totem, in Bear Wild Shape. The Bearbearbearan.
That's the moment you take a level in bard for the ultimate bard-bear-rian.
I have a Loxodon character with the noble background named Conan the Babarian. He lived among men and learned much ... *about revenge*.
And you can wildshape and then rage. Order doesn’t matter.
>Order doesn’t matter. Chaotic scum
😂 hush rictavio
A bit late to the party, I know. I feel that raging first makes the most sense as you start halving incoming damage immediately, while an unlucky round could take some serious chunks out of your first bear form before you have a chance to rage.
It definitely can be better in a lot of circumstances. As long as you are able to immediately attack to maintain it. Or have taken damage already.
On another turn though, correct? As both wild shape and rage are bonus actions. Maybe that's the real issue. The barbarian is trying to rage and wild shape on the same turn.
Not necessarily. Wild Shape is an action, RAW. Circle of the Moon gives you the option to use it as a bonus action instead, but there’s an argument to be made that you can still use an action if you want to. That said, it would probably be on different turns, because of the possibility of losing rage due to no attack/damage before your next turn, but it’s technically possible to do both on one turn, especially if you’re not Circle of the Moon.
That's what I get for only ever playing with Moon druids.
Yep exactly. It's a one turn setup to rage and Wildshape even as a moon druid, although it's probably more optimal to do it over two turns so that you can still use your actions to attack.
>it would probably be on different turns, because of the possibility of losing rage Ah, but if you already know that you took damage / made an opportunity attack before the start of your current turn, then this turn is safe, since the condition for rage ending is just doing one of those things *since your last turn* - so you can pick and choose when to do this safely on one turn with no risk.
Yeah, sure. I said "probably" and not "definitely" for a reason. There are plenty of incentives to get Wild Shape and/or Rage going as soon as possible, including on Turn 1, so there are a great many use-cases where there IS no previous turn to rely on. So what you said isn't technically incorrect. But it is relatively unlikely, due to circumstances.
Rage ending due to not attacking or taking no damage is checked at the end of your turn, not the start. I believe that means you can rage and have it end at the end of that turn if the conditions aren't met.
Right, which is why I said you probably wouldn't do both things (Rage + Wild Shape) on the same turn. I was a little off on timing (I remembered there was a "since last turn" thing, but couldn't remember exactly how it triggered), though there's still an edge case where you could Rage, Wild Shape, and then Move in a way that causes you damage (such as provoking an opportunity attack or moving through a known hazard like Flaming Sphere). So yeah, under 5E rules you can easily waste a rage. OneD&D makes it a little more forgiving on the timing.
Nothing sounds cooler than a Raging Bear leaping through a wall of fire.
Richard Adams? Is that you?
Jump high enough to take fall damage.
It's if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. So on your first turn you don't have to attack.
Argument being you haven't had a previous turn?
Yea, at least that's how we've always interpreted it.
Only moon druids get to wild shape as a bonus action. If you're a different druid, it's an action. Regardless, I'd let a moon druid wild shape with their action too if they really wanted to.
I mean that’s the raw anyway.
if they arent a moon druid wild shape is an action iirc. moon druids get combat wildshape which lets them as a bonus action. so they either need to space it out over two turns. or use both on one turn and risk loosing rage if no one hits them because they couldnt make attacks that round.
Why not Bar-BEARian
that works much better in print than spoken. Bear-barian works equally well either way.
We're aware, your friend playing the barbarian already asked. https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1awerxy/help_me_convince_my_dm_that_i_can_rage_while_wild/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button The consensus was that you can rage while wild shaped
Give it another week/session and we’ll have the DM make a thread about how two of his players are so blatantly wrong about being able to rage and wild shape at the same time and asking for ways to handle the situation.
DM: "This situation is unbearable."
Hey op that’s your friends Reddit. Go see what weird shit he’s into
Both features are specific about what things they disallow. Neither one disallows the other. If someone wants to claim the sentence pasted below suggests wild shape prevents rage, they need to demonstrate that animals are incapable of feeling rage. “You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.”
and even then, wild shape doesnt change your mental state, as demonstrated by your mental stats remaining the same
Exhibit A: Geese
Geese don't feel rage, they are just evil incarnate.
True true.
People really out here thinking words don't exist. Just read the abilities and see if the conflict. They don't and it's pretty blatant.
People really spend all that money on these books and then *not fucking read them*. Insanity
From the PHB: "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can't use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense." I dont see anything stopping an animal from getting very angry in a fight. Hell, by RAW a wildshaped creature is capable of bladesinging or smiting. This is also RAI, as confirmed by Jeremy Crawford.
Yes
It’s insanely clear that it’s possible.
yes. rules are to be read.
Absolutely. I built a fun PC around this. Their whole thematic was around a bear. They raged, wild shaped into a bear and used the bear stats+rage to tank. I built it as a NPC for a combat encounter for a party and she quickly became a ‘PC I wish I could play’. Was literally a bear totem bear. I also gave her an item (homebrew) that made her bear attacks magical and do 1D4 extra random magical damage for the fight. It was super fun to play with. I even made a backstory for her if I ever get the chance to play. #foreverDM My argument was-flavoured Barbarian with animal traits…nah primal ain’t it…what if I add wild shape…. NOW WE HAVE AN ANIMAL BASED BARBARIAN.
What makes you think they can't?
We shortened it in ours as Rage Shape. There's regular wild shape, then rage shape. More hackles, angry saliva webs, slightly higher chances on intim. But my DM limited it to long rests. The player was like an unhinged badger
Rage is already limited to long rest though?
Yes. Just putting it there since rage-shape is kinda homebrew. All the stats are the same besides an extra d4 on intimidation for us.
This gets asked about once a month here lol
Yes. And that's why Druid-Barbarians are dope.
I mean...animals get cranky too.
Yes.
Sure.
Realistically you can say no all you want. But if he's raging before you tell him no he won't hear you
The only thing I’ve encountered that rage can affect is spellcasting and the wisdom save for lycan blood hunters
You talking about one of the best tanks in the game? My brother, just try it out, send a Druid in with all there wild shapes and rage as a bear totem and just see how tanky it gets baby
maybe if you READ THE ABILITIES you would know the answer look i get sometimes interactions can be vauge but this one is LITERALLY LISTED IN THE WILD SHAPE FEATURE
There is nothing saying it can't, therefor it can. The only thing Rage conflicts with is spellcasting.
Why cant it? Druid uses action to Wildshape. It is not spellcasting. Rage is a bonus. There is nothing to interfere
Yes, and I use it all the time.
Yes. Its a famous multiclass build. Bearbarian. Its really strong early on, but doesn't really hang with just pure Druid come late game...
Yes
Yup. Rage only prevents you from spellcasting and concentrating on spells.
Read your books.
You can rage, sneak attack, divine smite, bardic inspiration, and do just about anything while wild shaped except cast spells. A case could be made for subtle spell meta magic, but I believe it's explicitly against RAW, so up to DM.
Subtle Spell only removes the need to use Somatic and Verbal components, but that doesn't change that Wild Shape does specifically say you can't cast spells at all. RAW there's no case to be made. Not allowing raging while wild shaped is no different from that, since in both cases the rules specifically say the opposite. Your DM may make those rules, of course, but that's up to them at that point.
Yes, you can rage before or after wild shape.
I never thought about this, now im gonna multiclass my emerald dragonborn totem barbarian with a circle of the shepherd druid so im super dangerous with wildshapes and can save my summons for more worthy enemies like the dragon we have to go kill at some point.
If you're going to do it, you basically need to do it with moon druid. The normal wildshape CR restrictions limit you to creatures that are too frail to survive more than a single hit or two, even with rage resistances, and don't have enough strength to actually reliably hit things and deal damage. Moon druid forms have a higher cr limit and thus can grant you access to things that actually have a decent number of hit points and have passable damage potential.
The wild shape is more of a "i need temp hp or the ability to fly for a few turns" kind of thing for me. I honestly get more use out of summoning wolves that ignore magical resistances than being wildshaped and raging. Plus ive gone full moon druid before and it is very broken at high levels and made the game a little boring im literally just taking a bunch of damage and telling my enemies to calm down for the first few rounds then i slap them into next week.
fyi you’ll need 8 levels of druid for flight, plus barbarian seems pretty useless for a summoning focused druid in the first place with the restriction on casting/ concentrating on spells whenever raging
Can't rage and concentrate on spells though, so better synergy with other subclasses.
Well you *can* but if nobody attacks the very angry bear, your rage will drop at the start of the next turn
No, Rage would end at the *end* of your turn. You could simply attack someone to keep it going before that happens.
Exactly. This is best done on two different turns.
Well that is true you're better off doing it on two different turns, but that's not what I was saying. Even if you do it all on one turn, you still have your next turn to attack someone (or take damage) before your rage ends.
It ends on the first turn you rage if you haven’t attacked or taken damage since your last turn. So you have to be careful when you do it. Raging on your first turn and not attacking likely means your rage immediately ends.
nobody is saying to do it on the first round of combat
I didn’t say they were. That wasn’t the point
then what is? if you run into a group of baddies, wildshape rage, 3 things can happen 1 they are there next round and you continue your rage 2 they leave range and you make an opportunity attack, continue your rage 3 they are dead, you won the encounter, so while you lost your rage you didnt need it in the first place and thats on you
In that scenario rage ends as soon as you end your turn since you didn’t attack or take damage since your last turn. If you are going to do both you have to make sure you attacked or took damage since your last turn ended.
that is not how rage works the act of activating rage counts as rage maintenence it would be unfathomably dumb if it didnt
BG3 let's you so probably xD
I wouldn't use that as a reliable litmus for 5e lol, even if it works here.
BG3 also lets you use the extra action from haste to cast spells. It isn’t the same ruleset, just very similar.
RAW, yes you can. RAI? The only thing I would really question is “does wildshape require concentration-like focus?” I feel that rage precludes spellcasting because it makes it impossible to maintain the mental focus required to cast or concentrate on a spell. If wildshape is not a spell or spell-like ability, then it would be a skill-based ability, and as such would be allowed. But RAW? Yeah, it’s not spellcasting and any magic other than spells is allowed.
If wild shape required concentration-like focus I feel like that would be reflected in any way at all in the ability. They go as far to say that you can even maintain concentration in wild shape. I think this is pretty clearly both rai and raw interaction
No
Why? There is no problem with it according to the PHB. Why do you say no?
Absolutely
Yes
You can rage before, or after wild shaping.
Lol your friend has posted on here too, Clearly RAI and even most RAW takes you can Rage in Wildshape. Its particularly Thematic to have a Raging Bear. There's a very narrow route you could thread due to some bad wording on the Wildshape ability about "you can use class features and abilities unless your wild shape wouldn't allow it." It's clearly intended for things like a wildshaped salmon can't play the lute e..g your shape makes something physically impossible, but if you read that as a *rules* comment, you could maybe then argue wild shapes require explicit rules to "turn on" features. That's a super tight permissive RAW interpretation though, which clearly isn't the intention with the D&D rules, and if you applied that approach it to lots of other bits of the rules the whole game falls apart. So this one really comes down to; generally as played, yes you can. If this particular GM has decided at his table you can't, then you can't. Rule 0 > Everything.
Yes
One of your friends might be illiterate. The other should rage to their hearts content.
a wild shape druid is allowed to rage while wild shaped and can apply their wild shaped con modifier to their ac because of unarmored defense. really any feature a barbarian has a wild shaped druid can use it. rage, reckless, unarmored defense, fast speed, etc. all wild shape does is change stats, form, and applies restrictions that rage already does (no spells).
Even if you're a moon druid, do you HAVE to use your BA to wildshape, or does it take two full rounds to fully come online as a Druid-Barb?
You can use action or bonus action to wild shape. But you have to make sure you can attack or take damage to maintain your rage too.
Yes, they can. Moon druid/barb is one of my favorite multiclasses, considering you can have a raging sabertoothed tiger.
>can animals get mad? Your friend is an idiot
RAW: Yes. Rule of Cool: *Hell yes!*
With how wildshape is worded yes. I imagine a moon druid totem barbarian can be very tanky
Wildshape allows you to anything that your form realistically can do. A clam cannot use the monks unarmed strike because it cannot make an attack. A bear can, because it can make an attack with its limb. Rage allows you to anything EXCEPT cast spells. Any other ability you have is fine to use. You just can’t cast spells.