Thaneborn Barbarians

[tombowings]

I know a few people have gotten ahold of PHBIIs. Mine wont come till Wednesday, so I was wondering if anyone could tell me about the thaneborn barbarian build.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Gunpowder]

Thaneborn:
get roar of triumph encounter power: a burst power that targets all enemies that gives a -2 to all defenses when the barbarian drops an enemy
Also when he bloodies an enemy the next attack against it gets a bonus to hit

 

[Eldorian]

Barbarians don't get a bonus to AC equal to con or cha while in light armor, as I had hoped. Instead, they get a +1 to ac and reflex in light armor per tier, so 1/2/3 scaling. It means they have some of the lowest AC of any characters I've seen, in light armor, but thaneborn have good non AC defenses at least. So it seems Dex is a good stat as a barbarian. If you start with a 14, your ac stays roughly 1 behind a rogue that takes no feats to improve his AC, which isn't that bad I guess. Rogues do get more options to improve AC than barbarians, however.

 

[On Puget Sound]

3.5 barbarians also had poor AC compared to other melee characters; they made up for it with massive HP and later with damage reduction. It seems 4.0 is using the same approach, the "is that all you got?" rather than the "hah! Missed me" defense.

 

[Byronic]

While they do get some bonuses and they have extra hitpoints to soak up damage wouldn't it technically be much better for them to take some chainmail armour? And perhaps take a feat to help their Reflex scores?

 

[Runestar]

3.5 barbarians also had poor AC compared to other melee characters; they made up for it with massive HP and later with damage reduction. It seems 4.0 is using the same approach, the "is that all you got?" rather than the "hah! Missed me" defense.

Not really. Thanks to the christmas tree effect, their AC would eventually end up the same as any other fighter (mithral fullplate, animated shield, ring of prot, amulet of NA, gloves of dex). Only penalty was the -2AC from raging.

It was possible to get your AC to zero by stacking penalties from various sources (eg: rage, robilar's gambit, frenzy, punishing stance, shock trooper, charging). But that was a conscious build decision, not something forced down your throat. And 3e had non-AC ways to protect yourself, such as miss chances and mirror image, so your mage with AC10 was actually harder to injure than the fighter with AC43.

I am not sure if the extra hp a barb gets actually makes up for its increased vulnerability, given the all or nothing nature of attack powers in 4e. I mean, if foes are still going to hit you consistently regardless of how high you can crank your AC, why even bother?

 

[Eldorian]

3.5 barbarians also had poor AC compared to other melee characters; they made up for it with massive HP and later with damage reduction. It seems 4.0 is using the same approach, the "is that all you got?" rather than the "hah! Missed me" defense.

AC didn't scale for anyone in 3e, unless you sought out every type of bonus you could find. In 4e, AC scales for everyone, including the new barbarian. It's just that the new barbarian has AC that is consistantly lower than basically every other class, with less options to increase it. No defensive weapon, no two weapon defense, nothing like that. Though most barbarians do make the reqs for heavy armor, so they can improve their AC at the expense of mobility, feats, and reflex.

Also, anyone else think the improved AC feat for avengers is way too powerful? +1 isn't bad, but it scales to +3 in epic. The class already has some of the best AC in the game just after taking leather profiecency.

 

[Akaiku]

No defensive weapon, no two weapon defense, nothing like that. Though most barbarians do make the reqs for heavy armor, so they can improve their AC at the expense of mobility, feats, and reflex.

Isn't the urgosh a 2 handed weapon? There is your defensive, two weapon defense d12 weapon that keys crit mods off str and con.

 

[MwaO]

Isn't the urgosh a 2 handed weapon?

That's considered to be the equivalent of holding a weapon in each hand. So, no, it isn't.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Barbarians don't get a bonus to AC equal to con or cha while in light armor, as I had hoped. Instead, they get a +1 to ac and reflex in light armor per tier, so 1/2/3 scaling. It means they have some of the lowest AC of any characters I've seen, in light armor, but thaneborn have good non AC defenses at least. So it seems Dex is a good stat as a barbarian. If you start with a 14, your ac stays roughly 1 behind a rogue that takes no feats to improve his AC, which isn't that bad I guess. Rogues do get more options to improve AC than barbarians, however.

I actually like what they did with the Barb's AC. As long as they start with some DEX, like the 14 you mentioned, the scaling bonus over the tiers will keep their AC and REF up without requiring them to up their ability score over time. This frees them up to just pump STR and their secondary stat (CON or CHA).

Of course, if you wanted to, you could up your DEX anyway and have a very high AC...but I don't know that it's the best idea. You won't get all the secondary effects that the Martial melee guys get (Rogues, Fighters and Rangers all have various powers that can add DEX to effects and damage). So you'd probably be best served to go 16, 14, 14 in STR, DEX and secondary stat respectively. This will give you pretty respectable defenses, and if you go with the Thaneborn build you'll have pretty good NADs across the board.

I think one of the things that they tried to get away from with the PHB 2 was the dependency on either DEX or Heavy Armor for defense. This is a good thing, because it meant you either had to focus on DEX, which limited multiclass selection, or had to pick up Heavy Armor of some sort, which can limit multiclass selection by virtue of the feat and ability score costs for some classes (Wizard, for example).

The Sorceror is a great example of this. You can apply either STR or DEX to your AC depending on build, which means you can multiclass to any of the STR primary (Fighter, Melee Ranger, Straladin, Str Cleric, Barbararian) classes or the DEX primary classes (Archer Ranger, Rogue) classes.

It also opens the option of MCing into a CHA primary classes without having to rely on DEX for AC, such as the Tiefling or the Charisma Paladin. This way, you don't HAVE to go Wild Mage in order to MC into those classes.

The same holds true for the Barbarian. With just a decent starting DEX he can always multiclass into Fighter and use some of the nice Axe powers because he'll have the room to pump CON.