Berserker Mage/Lock/Sorcerer

I find the Berserker class more than a little intriguing I have long liked the idea of a character for whom using magic is a gateway to "loss of control" having a role change from Defender to Striker is rather slick. In Wheel of Time the Male chanellers called the Ashamen would be a nice example from fiction. Now given one can also spend a minor action to Berserk. I thought hmmm I do not have to have the trigger to be totally automatic I basically need A berserker who could swap sorcery/warlock like powers for the Barbarian/Primal ones However" multiclassing just feels really innadequate on this one. Perhaps some form of Hybriding which maintained the Berserks role swapping functionality would be really nice

The role swap capability is rather one of those intriguing functions/ideas that started but wasnt followed through on.

Here is an attempt but not really feeling it

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Nala, level 8
Dragonborn, Berserker
Heartland: Temperate Land
Soul of Sorcery: Soul of Sorcery Fire
Dragonborn Subrace: Standard Dragonborn Racial Traits
Dragonborn Racial Power: Dragonfear


FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 20, Con 11, Dex 10, Int 15, Wis 8, Cha 18.


STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 11, Dex 10, Int 15, Wis 8, Cha 14.




AC: 23 Fort: 22 Reflex: 17 Will: 18
HP: 68 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 17


TRAINED SKILLS
Athletics +13, Intimidate +15, Nature +8, Endurance +8, Arcana +11


UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +3, Bluff +8, Diplomacy +8, Dungeoneering +3, Heal +3, History +8, Insight +3, Perception +3, Religion +6, Stealth +3, Streetwise +8, Thievery +3


FEATS
Level 1: Soul of Sorcery
Level 2: Arcane Prodigy
Level 4: Novice Power
Level 6: Deadly Rage
Level 8: Acolyte Power


POWERS
Berserker at-will 1: Aggressive Lunge
Berserker at-will 1: Jarring Smash
Berserker encounter 1: Batter Down (retrained to Explosive Pyre at Novice Power)
Berserker daily 1: Sweeping Cut
Berserker utility 2: Ominous Threat (retrained to Dragonflame Mantle at Acolyte Power)
Berserker encounter 3: Hammer Fall
Berserker daily 5: Dangerous Presence
Berserker utility 6: Kord's Force
Berserker encounter 7: Feast of Violence


ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Bloodguard Shield Spiked shield (heroic tier), Blood Fury Khopesh +2, Pouncing Earthhide Armor +3
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Hmmmmmmmmm What about this evil alternate form of Hybriding

The berserker holds a clue on having a close range defender class build that can choose to go berserk, such as fighters and swordmages, battlemind, paladin, and warden, when berserk they effectively lose 2 points of armor and can no-longer mark additionally they need a striker damage boost of 1 die per tier to any of their class attack powers. They can spend either minor action or perform a striker power to initiate berserkergang . When you pick this build you also pick a striker class from which you can learn powers in place of your normal ones.

A quick and dirty method would be :
- you can't mark
- if you mark, it doesn't do anything
- you loose all mark-related actions, options, and bonuses
- if a power, or action, or ability interacts with your mark, ignore that part of the power
- if a power becomes unusable (or contradictory, or incoherent) because it requires interaction with your mark, it's unusable
- gain +1d8 per tier to damage rolls

This wouldn't work with regards to a well-designed 4e system, but it would probably be good enough for many tables.

MoutonRustique said:

A quick and dirty method would be :
- you can't mark
- if you mark, it doesn't do anything
- you loose all mark-related actions, options, and bonuses
- if a power, or action, or ability interacts with your mark, ignore that part of the power
- if a power becomes unusable (or contradictory, or incoherent) because it requires interaction with your mark, it's unusable
- gain +1d8 per tier to damage rolls

This wouldn't work with regards to a well-designed 4e system, but it would probably be good enough for many tables.

Click to expand...

It's a bit slap dash of an idea I grant and might be implementable in a more controlled fashion as individual sub classes like similar to the Berserker, alah Daemonic Form (warlock) / Blood Surge Sorcerer or the like.

Note I specified the damage roll bonus for their "class attack powers" - I might have said "meaning their defender class" you do not want that affecting every damage roll because multiclassing and hybriding.

The loss of mark immediately on going raged/becoming power flooded might actually feel incongruous, I had thought of it ... perhaps the mark doesnt drop till the round following (to halt those till end of encounter mark lockdowns).

I think the loss of armor class is flavorwise important if you think its not usually necessary we might include it anyway and offset it with a boost of temporary hit points?

Works a lot better with Wizard. Then your AC doesn't suffer and you can do it within system via PMC. And striker with say Genasi for both Elemental Empowerment+Lightning Genasi works very well.

MwaO said:

Works a lot better with Wizard. Then your AC doesn't suffer and you can do it within system via PMC. And striker with say Genasi for both Elemental Empowerment+Lightning Genasi works very well.

Click to expand...

And extra benefit if i want it is getting rituals via Learned Caster to go with it.

Some Berserk Defensive features could actually be implemented with my Martial Arts techniques.

I think its pretty safe to allow some of this kind of stuff at a modest cost, MCing for instance works quite well with its feat cost, though only for certain cases. Being able to 'berzerkergang' or whatnot would be a reasonable capability. Maybe you could provide a basic capability in the guise of a theme 'Berserker', which would have a couple power swap type things to grant a modest damage bonus. You could then push it with a feat. Maybe you could call this type thing a 'Thematic Overlay', which would replace your theme, and provide a set of MC/Hybrid-like benefits along the lines suggested.

The only downside I can see is that it might take a rather large number of tweaked versions of this to do various combinations of overlays. OTOH it has some advantages over Hybrids in that each overlay would be a pretty specific package, so you could avoid Hybrid's pitfalls of presenting MANY bad choices along with a few overwhelmingly good ones. I think something like 8 variations would probably cover all the most obvious combos you'd want to do, but given 20 decent classes there's potentially 100's that COULD exist.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I think its pretty safe to allow some of this kind of stuff at a modest cost, MCing for instance works quite well with its feat cost, though only for certain cases. Being able to 'berzerkergang' or whatnot would be a reasonable capability. Maybe you could provide a basic capability in the guise of a theme 'Berserker', which would have a couple power swap type things to grant a modest damage bonus. You could then push it with a feat. Maybe you could call this type thing a 'Thematic Overlay', which would replace your theme, and provide a set of MC/Hybrid-like benefits along the lines suggested.

The only downside I can see is that it might take a rather large number of tweaked versions of this to do various combinations of overlays. OTOH it has some advantages over Hybrids in that each overlay would be a pretty specific package, so you could avoid Hybrid's pitfalls of presenting MANY bad choices along with a few overwhelmingly good ones. I think something like 8 variations would probably cover all the most obvious combos you'd want to do, but given 20 decent classes there's potentially 100's that COULD exist.

Click to expand...

I think you might be right about not needing every possibility