ruleslawyer said:
Just take the whole PrC. CoG is absurdly good; good enough that I might not even allow it IMC. (James Wyatt has a tendency to write these sorts of classes; look at the singh rager, kishi charger, and daidoji bodyguard!)
The orc double axe is NOT an optimal weapon choice; if half-orcs had Weapon Familiarity with it, it might be vaguely worth considering, but barbarians just don't get the feats to burn on exotic two-weapon fighting, and they shouldn't really waste the Dexterity on it either.
A good choice, if your DM allows Righteous Wrath to work with frenzy, is to take a level or two of Frenzied Berserker with this build. The moment you're not worried about attacking party members while under the influence of frenzy, one of the major weaknesses of the FB goes away.
I would never allow Righteous Wrath to work with frenzy (btw, I am the DM). Rage in my opinion never actually prevents the character from knowing friend from foe (only frenzy does that), so that portion of the feat is not too important to me. Rather, it is more the descriptive terms of being able to think perfectly coherently during the rage. Frenzy on the other hand is completely opposed to this. Moreover, the balance of the power of frenzy comes from not knowing friend from foe.
However, all of this is a moot argument because I am going for modeling the character's personality. Before I looked at BoED, I was thinking just barbarian fighter combo of some type. I wanted Daelan (not Daelon - I checked last night), to be, again, the noble savage - a good/pure/righteous warrior interested in restoring honor to his name and his family. I was thinking of a few builds:
Barb 2/Fighter 4/CoG 10/Vassal of Bahamut 2/Warrior of Righteousness 2
This build has the disadvanatage of taking Vow of Obediance which is completely useless considering the CoG ability rendering him immune to compulsion effects. However, the +8 armor granting a +4 max dex and couting as light armor is really awesome for a barbarian - he can wear it first off and still keep his max speed. Also, I was thinking that by the time he would reach it (18th level), it would be a cool story arch to have him be noticed by Bahamut and be chosen to represent good dragons. BTW, don't worry about the dex issue - I rolled up this guys stats already and got ridiculously good scores (I may even simply reduce some of them, they are so good - that is a big thing, since normally I never touch dice rolls).
I was also thinking about including some levels of Annointed Warrior with CoG. The annointed warrior really seemed on key for the character type I was going for.
For feats I was thinking:
Power Attack
Headlong Rush
Knight of the Stars
Righteous Wrath
Greater Resiliency/Roll With It (toughness)/Thick Skinned
TWF, ITWF, GTWF if I go with the Orc Double Axe
Weapon Focus
Weapon Specialization (if I go with the double axe)
Improved Critical
Power Critical (the original version in MotW)
I like resounding blow and the exalted feat that has it as a prereq (IDHMBWM) but with the limited threat range of axes I was thinking they were not optimal choices. I was also contemplating the D, M, SA chain as well as dash and the feat that lets you take a 90 degree turn while charging - this could be used to great effect with headlong rush. Speaking of headlong rush, is there anyway to prevent the AoO. As the DM I would be inclined to say, even with SA, charging would still provoke an AoO when using headlong rush. However, mobility seems to have nice synergy with the feat.
Again, thoughts, as always, appreciated.
I have a houserule that gives half-orcs weapon familiarity with orc double axes for the exact reason you bring up (it still may not be as optimal a choice by comparison to a greataxe). So presuming the orc gets the double weapon proficiency for free, what say you?
)
