D&D 5E Fighter + Barbarian shield wall duo

[Dragoslav]

Hi everyone,


This Saturday, I'm going to play 5e for the first time since the playtest. We're just going to do a one-shot, but if we all have fun, we may play a campaign with different characters. My fiancee is going to play a Barbarian, and I'm going to do a Battlemaster Fighter.


My original intent was only to try making something resembling a 4e Bravura Warlord using only what's in the PHB, but while taking a look at the Barbarian class and the Battlemaster maneuvers, I was filled with devilish glee as I began to imagine the mechanical synergies between these two character types. Here's what I have in mind:


Barbarian (Berserker) level 3
Variant human
Shield + battleaxe? Maybe a great axe, not sure.


Fighter (Battlemaster) level 3
Variant human
Chain mail
Defense fighting style (+1 AC)
Shield + longsword
Maneuvers: Rally, Commander's Strike, and either Riposte or Goading Strike
Human feat: Sentinel


My premise in designing these characters is that the Fighter will have AC as high as you can get for this level (Should be 19, I think?). The Barbarian will use Reckless Attack to get Advantage on attacks and encourage the enemy to attack her, but either target will be sub-optimal for the enemy.


If the enemy attacks the Fighter, they will probably miss, and if I have Riposte then I might attack them for extra damage with my superiority dice. If they manage to hit me, I will just self-heal the damage with Second Wind.


If the enemy attacks the Barbarian, they will probably hit, but will do half damage (due to Barbarian Rage), and I get to attack them with my Reaction. If I have Goading Attack and hit the enemy with that, it will cancel out the Advantage against the Barbarian and obviate the attack bonus, thus encouraging them to waste an attack on me.


Note that there will only be 3 of us in the party, and I don't know what the third player will play. I'm also not going for strictly optimized builds, which I assume would be building only one combatant as a tank and the other as more damage-oriented, or better yet just optimizing both combatants for maximum damage. Mostly, I'm just interested in seeing how the build works out in play, especially given the added complexity brought by the feats and maneuvers that use characters' Reactions. To that end, I have a few questions for those with more experience with the game in actual play:


1) Recommended feats for the Barbarian? I'm thinking Grappler if she uses a battle axe and no shield, or Shield Master if she uses a shield.
2) Preference for Riposte over Goading Strike? I'd like to keep Rally and Commander's Strike because I still want to try emulating the Warlord class (my favorite class in 4e), but with sufficient convincing I may be convinced to get rid of one or the other so I can get both Riposte and Goading Strike for maximum ability to punish enemies for whatever decision they might make.
3) Any other thoughts? Things that I have overlooked, inconsistencies, redundancies?

Thanks!

 

[Dragoslav]

Having put these builds into play together, I can say that the synergy is amazing. We played two combat encounters, one either medium or hard difficulty, and one lethal encounter, separated by long rests. The maneuvers I chose were Rally, Goading Attack, and Riposte, but I never used Goading Attack, preferring to use Rally to keep our third player (a sorceror) on his feet.

Everything worked exactly as I expected, to the point where I began to feel badly for the DM at how ineffective his monsters were against us. When he realized how unlikely hitting the Fighter was, he generally opted to have his monsters attack the Barbarian, which let me get an extra attack, although it was only one extra per round. We were outnumbered in each encounter, so prioritizing defense (to reduce the chance of one of the many monsters getting a lucky hit on me) was superior to prioritizing offense (the enemies generally went down in two hits, anyway).

The Defense fighting style, for being only a +1 AC, actually ended up having a significant effect, as several times a monster missed me with an 18 versus my 19 AC.

It worked well when we were outnumbered because, if the DM throws in a lot of enemies, they're probably going to have poor accuracy. That being said, I can see it working really well against fewer enemies or solo enemies, as well: they have fewer chances to hit your massive AC, and you get more off-turn attacks proportionally to the number of enemies.

It was really fun. Repeatedly not getting hit is fun, making attacks off your turn is fun, I liked the imagery of two warriors fighting side by side against hordes of monsters, and encouraging enemies to not attack your teammates is fun. It really made me reconsider which class I wanted to play for our actual campaign (I had originally wanted to play a Paladin). At the very least, I'm going to buy a shield and longsword in addition to a great sword, and I'm probably going to pick up Sentinel at some point.