The Frenzied Champion – Barbarian/Fighter Multiclass Build Guide

For all D&D guides on Nat1gaming, they only use the main sourcebooks (Player’s Handbook, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything) as well as Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (mostly for Silvery Barbs) as those tend to be the most commonly used books at tables. Always be sure that if you’re following a guide that you’re adhering to your tables rules about what sourcebooks you are allowed to follow.

Any spell, class, feature, or other game item that is linkable on this website is covered by the 5th edition Open Games License and will be in the Player’s Handbook, but not everything in the Player’s Handbook will be linked to. All other materials that aren’t linked to are from other sourcebooks or aren’t allowed to be linked to per the 5th Edition Open Games License, so please refer to the appropriate sourcebooks for that information.

For spellcasters, you may notice substantial overlap between the spell lists of builds with the same base class. This is due to each guide utilizing a generically good spell list and not considering extenuating factors that will influence how you particularly sculpt your spell list. When creating your own spell list, you should take into account the campaign setting, what spells any other party members are capable of casting, potential overlap (ritual spells tend to overlap so it’s rare you need multiple people capable of casting them), or potential shortcomings in the parties total spell list. While this guide can definitely help point you in the right direction for crafting a spell list, you should use your judgement and preferences to figure out what spells make the most sense for your character.

To that end, please refer to the Spell List and Spell Tier list for any substitutions you’d want to make to the build.

The Champion Fighter is a cool subclass, but the main issue with it is that you’re a bit incentivized to dual wield light weapons to get the highest critical hit chance possible, but when you do get the critical hit, it isn’t that impactful. By combining the Champion with the new Berserker Barbarian, you hit harder than you normally would both because of your Rage damage bonus (which works well with a lot of attacks) and the Frenzy ability which gives you an additional 2d6 damage on your first attack, which if it’s a critical hit, will add up pretty quickly.

Not every inherent interaction here is going to be mentioned in the guide, so check out the multiclassing guide to help answer any additional questions you may have!

The build itself is very simple, enter Rage and smack your enemies as many times as you can, using your Hill Giant ability when you can and Reckless Attacking for the advantage (so a much higher critical hit chance) otherwise. This build is all about the damage it can deal, so go wild!

• You are looking to get advantage on your hits as much as possible, but since you have so few Topples to work with, you do want to be mindful in how often you use them. Try to save these for tougher fights when possible!
• While Reckless Attack can be dangerous, this is your primary tool to potentially nabbing massive damage and critical hits. Use it against weaker enemies that may have a tougher time hitting you more than the big bad. Remember that advantage/disadvantage is roughly adding or subtracting 4 from someone’s roll.
• While you don’t need to Rage every fight, if your DM doesn’t throw too many encounters at you per day, it’s hard to justify not doing it, especially if you’re planning on using Reckless Attack a lot.

Species: Goliath (Hill Giant)

Attributes:

Class: Fighter

Class Features: Fighting Style, Second Wind, Weapon Mastery

Skill Proficiencies: Insight and Perception

Background: Farmer (Tough)

Starting Equipment: Scale Mail, Scimitar, Short Sword, 10 Javelins, Dungeoneer’s Pack, and 53 gp + 50 gp from background

Species: Goliath (Hill Giant)

For any martial character, it’s hard to justify not going for Goliath as the Hill Giant topple is so incredibly good to get advantage on attacks. There are other solid options for species as well like Human for an additional origin feat or Aasimar as they are just generally strong, but Goliath is generally going to be my choice.

Attributes

The common stat distribution for Strength based martials who want to wear medium armor.

Proficiencies: Insight and Perception

Just excellent skill proficiencies for any character.

Background: Farmer

The best attributes with the best feat for martial characters that care about Strength.

Starting Equipment – Scale Mail, Scimitar, Short Sword, 10 Javelins, Dungeoneer’s Pack, and 53 gp + 50 gp from background

You want to pick the starting gold to get this equipment.

Class – Fighter

Rangers get three abilities to start off with in Fighting Style, Second Wind, and Weapon Mastery.

The Fighting Style you’re going to pick is Two Weapon Fighting! Getting your STR as bonus damage with your offhand attacks is excellent and is going to really ramp up your damage potential.

Second Wind is a cool feature where, for a bonus action, you can heal yourself a bit. This is obviously great for tough fights when you are running low on health and this not only scales with level, but also gets additional features later on.

Weapon Mastery gives you the Mastery property of three weapons and I would recommend taking the properties of your three starting weapons. To that end, make sure you are always using your Scimitar in your main hand to properly access the mastery property.

Level 2

Class: 2 Fighter

Class Features: Action Surge, Tactical Mind

Level 2 brings two new features with Action Surge and Tactical Mind.

The Fighter is one of the most popular multiclass options in D&D, and Action Surge is a huge reason why. While you can only use this once every short or long rest (twice at 17), getting an additional action almost always means a whole new slew of attacks. Even at level 2, this is a powerful ability, but once you get multiple Extra Attacks, this becomes an extremely powerful feature that can dole out an obscene amount of damage. In a pinch, this can be used for other actions such as Dash as well which adds to the power and utility of this ability.

Tactical Mind is a neat new feature that allows you to use a Second Wind charge to reroll a failed ability check with a bit of a bonus. While this won’t come up too often, this is a nice feature to have for particularly important ability checks.

Level 3

Class: 3 Fighter (Champion)

Class Features: Improved Critical, Remarkable Athlete

Level 3 brings your subclass, and for this guide, it’s Champion. Champion brings two abilities to the table immediately with Improved Critical and Remarkable Athlete!

Improved Critical increases your critical range from just 20 to 19-20. While this may not seem particularly impactful, this does literally double your critical hit chance and incentives you to make as many attacks as you possibly can (preferably from advantage), hence why this build is going with Two Weapon Fighting. As you get more attacks, this is going to get more and more dangerous for your enemies!

Remarkable Athlete gives you advantage on Athletics checks (boo) and advantage on Initiative rolls! Obviously advantage on Initiative is really strong, and mathematically, advantage gives you a +4 to rolls

Level 4

Class: 4 Fighter

Feat: Dual Wielder (STR)

Class Features: None

This build is focusing on getting as many attacks as possible, so for your first feat, you obviously have to take Dual Wielder! Once you get your extra attack, between a weapon with the Nick Property, Dual Wielder, and the Extra Attack, you get 4 attacks per turn! If you throw Action Surge into the mix, you end up getting 7 attacks all in the same turn! Since you want to roll as many dice as possible for the possibility to get a critical hit, this feat is necessary.

Level 5

Class: 5 Fighter

Class Features: Extra Attack, Tactical Shift

Easily the most exciting feature for martial characters, level 5 brings your Extra Attack! Being able to double your damage output is obviously really strong, but since you’re a Fighter, you’ll eventually get even more attacks on top of this!

Level 5 also brings a new feature with Tactical Shift. Now when you use Second Wind, you can move up to half your speed without provoking an opportunity attack. A heal, disengage, and extra movement? Sign me up!

Level 6

Class: 6 Fighter

Feat: Slasher (STR)

Class Features: None

Fighter brings an additional feat at level 6, and I like picking up Slasher. You get a bit of utility with your hits which could be relevant, but for a build focused around getting critical hits, you also get an additional effect that gives any enemy you hit with a critical disadvantage on all attacks until the start of your turn. Neither ability is that great individually, but together, you have a solid feat.

Level 7

Class: 1 Barbarian 6 Fighter

Class Features: Rage, Unarmored Defense, Weapon Mastery

We are now moving over into Barbarians! This build relies on getting 3 levels of Barbarian for most of the game and this is the best time to pick the first level up.

Barbarians come with three inherent features that is emblematic of Barbarians in general – Rage, Unarmored Defense, and Weapon Mastery.

Rage is a bonus action activated ability that gives you a big boon in combat a few times a day (that will incrementally climb as you level up). While Raging, you have advantage on all Strength checks and saving throws, you gain bonuses to your Weapon damage, and you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. You can maintain this powerful state for 10 minutes as long as you keep attacking, force an enemy to make a saving throw, or you use your bonus action to actively maintain it. You start with 2 Rage charges per day, but once per day after a short rest, you get one charge back which is a nice change from 5e. An absolutely excellent ability overall.

Unarmored Defense is easy, your AC is 10 + CON modifier + DEX modifier. So for level 1, your AC will be 15 which is solid, but nothing special.

Weapon Masteries are the new feature coming in One D&D that gives you a weapon’s mastery property when you select it. Obviously you aren’t hurting for more mastery properties at this point so you can pick whatever.

Level 8

Class: 2 Barbarian 6 Fighter

Class Features: Danger Sense, Reckless Attack

Now you have access to Danger Sense and Reckless Attack!

It’s hard to know how often Danger Sense will come into play, but it is an excellent class feature as traps can be very dangerous in lower levels.

Reckless Attack is a mixed bag as giving yourself advantage on attacks for a turn at the cost of everyone having advantage on attacks against you can be a scary tradeoff. While this is definitely risky when there’s a lot of enemies or you aren’t raging, this is a strong feature when you just care about maximizing your damage, especially after you get your Extra Attack!

Level 9

Class: 3 Barbarian (Berserker) 6 Fighter

Class Features: Frenzy, Primal Knowledge

Now that you get your subclass, you get a new subclass ability to work with as well as a base class ability.

Frenzy gives you additional damage while you’re both Raging and Reckless Attacking, very flavorful for a path called Berserker. Furthermore, this is pretty important for this build as this will give you an additional 2d6 damage when you land a critical hit on top of the additional +2 damage you’re getting on each hit you naturally get anyway.

For your base class feature, Primal Knowledge gives you more proficiencies from the base Barbarian class, and this is a solid time to pick up Intimidation, but it’s really up to you what you want at this point.

Level 10

Class: 3 Barbarian 7 Fighter

Class Features: Additional Fighting Style (Defense)

You got your three levels in Barbarian, so now you can go back to putting levels into Fighter.

You get your next subclass ability which brings another Fighting Style, and unfortunately, the only good one left for you is Defense. +1 AC is definitely nice though, so I’m not complaining.

Level 11

Class: 3 Barbarian 8 Fighter

Class Features: Mage Slayer (STR)

You get another feat this level, and you can finally get 20 Strength with Mage Slayer. Being able to really mess with casters is nice as a martial character, and getting a functional charge of Legendary Resistance? Incredible! A really strong feat that I have most of my martial characters taking.

Level 12

Class: 3 Barbarian 9 Fighter

Class Feature: Indomitable (x1), Tactical Master

This level brings a base Fighter feature – Indomitable! You can reroll a saving throw that you fail and add your Fighter level on top of it which is extremely powerful. As you climb in levels, this will almost be like a player’s version of Legendary Resistance which is super cool.

Tactical Master is a new ability lets you replace a weapon mastery property when you attack with Push, Sap, or Slow. This is yet another great feature as you may not always want the mastery property on the weapon you happen to be using, so having options is always welcome.

Level 13

Class: 3 Barbarian 10 Fighter

Class Features: Heroic Warrior

10 levels in Fighter gives you Heroic Warrior!

Now every turn you can gain a charge of Heroic Inspiration if you don’t have it! This gives you one bout of advantage every turn of combat. That is really powerful and should be used very liberally.

Level 14

Class: 3 Barbarian 11 Fighter

Class Features: Extra Attack (x2)

11 levels in Fighter means an additional attack which is obviously extremely good.

Level 15

Class: 3 Barbarian 12 Fighter

Feat: Constitution to 18

Class Features: None

You get another feat and it’s time to start buffing your Constitution! More health and better saving throws is a really good investment for your ASI.

Level 16

Class: 3 Barbarian 13 Fighter

Class Feature: Indomitable (x2), Studied Attack

Level 13 brings another charge of Indomitable and a powerful new feature, Studied Attack!

Studied Attack is a super cool feature that, if you miss with one of your attacks against one enemy, you have advantage on your next attack against that same target! Anything that helps you connect with your enemy is always exciting!

Level 17

Class: 3 Barbarian 14 Fighter

Feat: Constitution to 20

Class Features: None

Maximizing your Constitution score to get the highest possible health and saving throws is awesome!

Level 18

Class: 3 Barbarian 15 Fighter

Class Features: Superior Critical

You get yet another improvement to your critical hit range as now you hit from 18-20! This is only a 50% improvement compared to your initial critical hit range improvement, but it still very welcome.

Level 19

Class: 3 Barbarian 16 Fighter

Epic Boon: Boon of Combat Prowess (STR)

Class Features: None

You now get another feat, and since you’re total level 19, you can pick up an Epic Boon! The Epic Boon choice, as I will pick for every martial character, is the Boon of Combat Prowess. Converting a miss into a hit is functionally getting an Extra Attack, but better, and I will take an additional attack every day of the week.

Level 20

Class: 3 Barbarian 17 Fighter

Class Feature: Action Surge (x2), Indomitable (x3)

Level 20 is actually an extremely interesting choice between an additional level in Fighter or an additional level in Barbarian. If you go a level in Fighter, you have two Action Surge and 3 Indomitable per short rest which is extremely powerful. However, if you pick up your fourth Barbarian level, you get to get an additional Epic Boon (I would take Irresistible Offense for even more brutal critical hits and 22 Strength). This is a really tough choice, but I think getting the additional Action Surge and Indomitable charges is just a bit too good to pass up.