Use a free action after a charge?

[DracoSuave]

Actually I don't tend to let Barbarians charge after a charge. While I appreciate they are good at charging, they're restricted to the one charge per round, same as anyone else. They -do- however, get their bonus charge after -other- attacks anyways.

Not -every- attack a Barbarian does is a charge, in fact most aren't. So it doesn't unduly hurt the barbarian if I don't like him put a charge in his charge so he can move while he moves.

[Anand]

I guess the disadvantage of charging is losing your actions. You get +1 to hit, and you move + attack. If the barbarian wants to use his encounter, all he have to do is move and attack.

I also don't allow my warden PC to mark after charging, and he usually just walks next to the monsters.

[SigmaX0]

This wasn't even an issue in my group, it was assumed that any free action could be used after a charge, since you can use free actions at any point, even on someone else's turn.

My rationale is thus: why are you not allowed to move after a charge? As a charge is both an attack and a move, it is unique in that you could move in, attack and then still have a move action left to move out again and get safe.

This is the important distinction for me. The paragon feat (I think in MP) allowing you to take actions after a charge I see as the equivalent of the 3E swift attack (or whatever it was called, move in, attack and move out).

I think the restriction on charging is to stop this kind of abuse, not to limit a pretty fundamental aspect of the Barbarian over what can only be described as a very tenuous case of general vs specific.

[Orcus Porkus]

Here is another free action that can trigger on a charge attack in my book:

Spur the Cycle

Just as in the natural world, death leads to new life: killing your foe spurs you to further action.
Daily Primal
Free Action Personal
Trigger: You reduce an enemy to 0 hit points during your turn
Effect: You take a standard action.

Overpowered? No. Fun? Yes.

[Prestidigitalis]

This won't help resolve the debate, but I believe the core of the problem is that the WotC designers did not set down hard and fast rules about the difference between Free Action, No Action and "not even a No Action", or else did not communicate them well. (Examples of "not even a No Action" are things like the Rageblood Vigor Barbarian's bonus Temporary Hit Points after knocking an opponent to 0 hit points).

The way I think of them is this:

Free Actions take a tiny amount of time (say, 1/4 second) or else they cause events around them to slow down for dramatic purposes (e.g., while you are shouting "Surrender!" to your foes, everyone else is distracted and holds their blows.)

No Actions take no time. None. Not even a thought is required. It's not an action so much as "the roll of the dice lied" (Elven Accuracy) or of the player telling the DM "No, THIS is what REALLY happened". [It is my belief that use of Action Points should be in this category, with the continued caveat of using them only on your own turn.]

Not even a No Action: just a consequence of the triggering event. No decisions involved by character or player.

Now, that's just my interpretation. But it's pretty clear that whatever scheme the designers came up with, it did not propagate through the product evenly.

Note: I saw the same thing in 3.x, where the designers quasi-randomly talked about extra-dimensional space, non-dimensional space, etc. without ever defining what they were, how they differed, and how they interacted. It's almost as if they treated all the different versions of "blah-dimensional space" as synonymous terms chosen for literary effect.