Oh, and DEX-Barbarians, while their AC is potentially ridiculous, deal no damage to speak of (since Reckless Attack only works with STR).
Hello there,
Looking at the barbarian in 5e I was surprised by how some of his abilities work. Mainly the defensive ones.
1) Rage apparently gives you resistance (half damage) to absolutely all physical attacks, is that right?
2) Unarmored Defence allows for a better AC than a fighter in heavy armor, possibly?
In this case one could eventually hit 20 in both Dex and Con, for an AC20, and use a shield with that for a total of AC22, while losing very little damage potential if you're using a Finesse weapon.
Adding everything you could have:
And as a bonus:
- An AC22 Barbarian
- that takes 1/2 damage from all attacks
- still has +5 to hit and damage from Dex
- high Dex saves (possibly always with advantage)
- a gigantic pool of HP with 1d12 + Max Con
- possibly immunity to fear and charm, making even "mind" effects harder to stop him.
This all seems way overpowered to me at first glance. To the point that I'm wondering why bother with other melee classes (unless specifically for flavour of course), or with armour.
But since I'm not very familiar with 5e standards yet, I might be missing some crucial details, or this might not be so powerful as it seems at first glance.
Any thoughts on that?
PS: Of course you could just not min/max abilities, and a Barbarian with Finesse sounds a little ridiculous, but it's still weird that the most "optimized" Barbarian possible would be a high-Dex Finesse one, instead of your classic raging brute.
You may also want to pay attention to how rage works -- skip a round of attacking and don't get attacked and rage is done, soend another. If you're doing set pieces, this is no big deal, but a running encounter absolutely murders rage efficiency.Thanks for the clarifications, folks.
I hadn't noticed the fact that you need to use Str on your attacks to get Rage bonus to damage.
I guess the best you could achieve initially, if using the standard point buy system, is picking 15, 14, 14, 10, 10, 8. Then use the variant human to boost Dex and Con, and then pick an initial feat that gives +1 to either Dex or Con. You'd end up with these values, in order: 14, 16, 16, 10, 10, 8.
By level 8 you'd have a (supposedly) very strong AC of 20 using a shield, while still using your 14 Str to attack gaining the Rage bonus, for quite respectable damage, I guess, even if not maxed.
Yeah a full plate could give you the same AC, but having the same AC as a full plate while "naked" feels quite powerful, if you consider you'd also have beastly amounts of HP, great Dex/Con saves (which are two of the most used), and will be taking only 1/2 damage from most attacks, possibly "doubling" your HP. And you can still push those values higher with more levels.
I guess how powerful this is really depends on the campaign you're playing:
* If full plates or wealth are abundant to your players, it's less of a big deal. Otherwise if they're uncommon or wealth is tight, a suit of full plate costs a whooping 1,500gp.
* If magic is quite common, then the 1/2 from physical attacks is also less of a big deal. But if you're playing a low-magic, grittier campaign, where almost every attack is claws, bites, blades and maces... taking 1/2 from everything might be really overpowered.
So on second thought, the AC is good but not as powerful as I initially thought.
But the damage resistance might be insane depending on the setting you're playing.