Barbarian Multiclassing: Taking Levels as Sorceror?

[Mattgbg]

I have a barbarian character that I am modeling after one of my longstanding comic characters. During the course of the story he acquires an affinity for basic dark magic, and I was hoping to find a way to tie that into this DDO character.

I'm thinking that at some point I would take a few levels in sorcery (or possibly wizardry), but I don't want to do it if is going to seriously gimp my character. I have heard form others that its a bad idea to multiclass with spellcasting, but reading up on the compendium I think there might be some potential in it.

Does anyone have any thoughts or previous experience Multiclassing a Barbarian/Fighter with sorcery? Should I try it out? Or should I go ahead and give up now before I ruin my character?

[Stabsy]

I haven't tried it but a couple of comments:

1) You can't easily cast spells in armour. There's an arcane fail % depending on the armour you're wearing. It's actually not too bad in the starter chain shirt (20%) and I wear that on my wiz/rog and just re-cast the fails.

2) You can't cast while enraged. If your basic routine is self-buff, rage, charge that shouldn't matter. but something to note if you leap off a cliff then click your Feather Fall button a lot.

3) Stats aren't terribly complementary. Sorc is CHA-based and Barb is STR-based.

Now to the plus side

You can take your armour off and cast some great long lasting self-buffs. Protection from Evil, Shield, Bull's Strength, all great buffs for a Barb. Put your armour back on after casting and off you go. Extend Spell feat is particularly useful for this. If you don't want to spend a feat there consider Wizard instead (they get free metamagic feats).

I think it is really fun and interesting to try different builds. You will be a glass cannon dps of the first order but people would expect either of your classes to be a glass cannon dps so that won't matter much. Try it and let us know how it goes.

[Brennie]

Multiclassing Wizard/Sorceror is usually a bad idea.

Multiclassing wizard/sorceror with a melee character (Barbs, rangers, paladins, and fighters, specifically) is *always* a bad idea. The spell benefit you gain will be minimal (Typically only slightly more benefit than you could gain from clickies and potions), while the loss will be tremendous.

You will fail casts often, while in armor. Taking off armor takes a nanosecond, but putting it back on is a pain in the patoot.

Wizards and Sorcerors get very low BaB and very low hitpoints. They also require VERY high Int/Charisma for spellpoints and offensive casting.

Wizards and Sorcerors rely on class levels for spell damage, spell duration, spell penetration, dispell checks, spellpoints, and a number of other traits. Any levels they are missing will severly impact their casting ability.

Long story short, the benefits you gain will be very minor, but what you will lose will be major. If you're just going for flavor, then have a blast. But if you're worried about viability, this is a bad option.


I haven't tried it but a couple of comments:

1) You can't easily cast spells in armour. There's an arcane fail % depending on the armour you're wearing. It's actually not too bad in the starter chain shirt (20%) and I wear that on my wiz/rog and just re-cast the fails.

One if Five chance to waste spellpoints and cast time when you cast spells seems pretty bad to me. And it gets worse in Breastplate by 5%, for 1 in 4 chance

2) You can't cast while enraged. If your basic routine is self-buff, rage, charge that shouldn't matter. but something to note if you leap off a cliff then click your Feather Fall button a lot.

This is very important. Also note that casting will slow down your ability to melee, if you were planning on using your casting offensively

3) Stats aren't terribly complementary. Sorc is CHA-based and Barb is STR-based.

Also important. As a Barbarian you will ned a lot of strength and consitution, while Int and Charisma are typically dump stats. Trying to keep these even will reduce your ability to melee, and reduce your ability to cast spells effectively.

Now to the plus side

You can take your armour off and cast some great long lasting self-buffs. Protection from Evil, Shield, Bull's Strength, all great buffs for a Barb. Put your armour back on after casting and off you go. Extend Spell feat is particularly useful for this. If you don't want to spend a feat there consider Wizard instead (they get free metamagic feats).

These spells are only "Long Lasting" when extended and cast by high level casters. Having only a few levels of Wizard/Sorceror will make them last only a few minutes, coupled with small spellpoint pool, this means they will only be able to be cast situationally. Many will also be overlapped by more useful gear and items (Bulls Strength, Bear endurance, protection from evil will almost all certianly be overshadowed by good items (And non stackable with said items) midway through your leveling).

I think it is really fun and interesting to try different builds. You will be a glass cannon dps of the first order but people would expect either of your classes to be a glass cannon dps so that won't matter much. Try it and let us know how it goes.

Being my typical cynical self, I'd say don't try it. it may work out fine for a few levels (A 6 strength rogue can melee undead with a greatsword for the first few levels, even). Its only after a good amount of time investment, around level 4-5, that you will really start to see the major flaws and faults in this build. I caution you not to feel liek you've gotten too deep and wated your time. If you don't mind long experiements though, its always better to learn for yourself (and heck, you might find somethign ultra cool i never thought of)

[Nyvn]

Look into the Arcane Psychoe build

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=116254

[Yagi]

Might be fun. You could definately stock up on wands and web doorways like a maniac. Why not try it? Worse comes to worse, you decide its not for you and make another character. If you do go ahead and try it, I suggest maybe just going for utility spells as you wont even come close to barb damage with a few low lvl spells (And will lose dps if you try to cast dps spells in combat that will hit for far less then you can crit for as barb) , but with some smart moves you could maybe be pretty versitile in some situations. But of course look long and hard at that barb capstone and decide if its worth giving that up.

I've only been playing since sept so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[tihocan]

I'm thinking that at some point I would take a few levels in sorcery (or possibly wizardry), but I don't want to do it if is going to seriously gimp my character.
Two levels won't seriously gimp you. More will. However, 2 levels of wiz or sorc are particularly useless to a barbarian, unless you're warforged and can use the repair spells/wand to top off between rages. Otherwise, hmm, maybe wands of blur and energy resists. But all that could be obtained too with 2 levels of rogue that give you evasion, and thus is more interesting (+ some sneak attack dmg, and possibly open locks, and access to higher level scrolls like Heal and Greater Heroism).

[Angelus_dead]

Does anyone have any thoughts or previous experience Multiclassing a Barbarian/Fighter with sorcery?
If the level cap were 10 it would have some minor usefulness. But since the level cap is 20, taking even 1 level of caster on a barbarian will nearly ruin the character.

Barbarians should either stay pure, or take rog2 Evasion. Nothing else is even a little sensible.

[satanofmetal]

Im still downloading the game, but i've been playing DnD for 5 years now, and there's a golden rule about melee warriors: do not mix then up with casters classes. Why? You are a barbarian, focus on combat, so you primary atributes should be STR DEX and CON, and nothing else. You see, usually a barbarian char is not the kind of guy that do not have a high CHA or is the smart one of the group (INT), so you would just waste lvls for a caster that would never be usefull. Just gonna repeat: BAD IDEIA. Just stick with the pure barbarian and you should be fine =]

[Cendaer]

I have a barbarian character that I am modeling after one of my longstanding comic characters. During the course of the story he acquires an affinity for basic dark magic, and I was hoping to find a way to tie that into this DDO character.

I'm thinking that at some point I would take a few levels in sorcery (or possibly wizardry), but I don't want to do it if is going to seriously gimp my character. I have heard form others that its a bad idea to multiclass with spellcasting, but reading up on the compendium I think there might be some potential in it.

Does anyone have any thoughts or previous experience Multiclassing a Barbarian/Fighter with sorcery? Should I try it out? Or should I go ahead and give up now before I ruin my character?

I would say go ahead and try it, but don't plan on it being your first primary character, instead, treat it more like a hobby until you get your build just right for what you want it to do.

Also keep in mind that the sizable community of min-max'ers will always tell you that your character is broken, no matter how much fun it is for you to play, or how well you've built it. For that reason, I would only suggest you try this sort of build only after you've joined a guild you're comfortable with, since the min-max'ers who lead PUG's will likely turn their nose up at you when you try to join their party.

That being said, I suggest you take a look at the Arcane Psycho build referenced earlier in this thread. Warforged would be my first choice for such a build, since you'll get more mileage out of it due to resistances and the ability to self-heal to some degree.

Whether Warforged or not, you'll only be able to wear light armor if you want to avoid Arcane Spell Failure, and it will require at least 12 AP's (IIRC) spent on the proper enhancements. If you're only hoping to self-buff and self-heal, the ASF might not be a big deal to you since you'd be doing most of your spell casting outside of combat. If you're hoping to mix spells into combat, ASF will likely become a PITA.

I would also suggest going with Wizard, since that's INT based, and you'll be able to garner a few more skill points than the typical melee character due to having bumped your INT up a bit for spell casting. Another good reason for going Wizard on such a build would be that you'll be able to swap spells in and out easily, and thus experiment more with the spells available to you.

The drawback to Wizard would be the smaller SP pool, which would make ASF even more of a PITA; as a Wizard, you won't have many SP's to spare on failed casts. If you really don't want to go Wizard, then I'd suggest at least rolling up a pure Wizard, and familiarizing yourself with the available spells. That way, if you add the Sorcerer levels, you won't have to spend a lot of time and gold swapping spells around to figure out which ones you actually want to use.

Good luck, and have fun!

[MissErres]

***??? A Barbarian/Sorc.....

NOOOOOOO....!!!!!

[Angelus_dead]

I'll put it this way:
A Barb19/Sorc7 would be a worse character than Barb20.