Barbarians - Anything I should look for?

[Obryn]

Hey, all!

One of my players just switched from a Drow Archer Ranger to a Minotaur Barbarian, 8th level.

Is there anything I should watch out for? It looks like a pretty capable class - flavorful without being overpowered. However, I'd like to know anything I might have missed.

He's taken Chainmail Proficiency, Executioner Axe, and Fast Runner (for the charging speed boost).

-O

 

[Seule]

I'd hold off at this point for the 1 month until the final version of the class comes out. The version available now is a playtest class only, and I'm pretty confident that changes have been made to it in the PHBII. For example, the barbarian as released has a terrible AC, such that chainmail proficiency is a no-brainer feat, I suspect that they fixed that in some way.
Aside from that, I don't see any big issues with barbarians.

--Penn

 

[frankthedm]

Should I assume the player is using the DDI version of the minotaur? since the MM version is pretty much broken.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/244251-playing-minotaurs-2.html

The Monster Manual racial descriptions were never intended to be the canonical mechanics for those races. As the MM itself states, those stats are for DMs to create NPCs. You can use them as PCs, but a DM allows them at his own peril.

Thus, you'll see things like giving monsters oversized weapons and not giving them to official PC races. As others have pointed out, oversized weapons in PC hands are simply too good. It makes those races strictly better with weapons. If a PC race somehow gets it, expect it to be errata'd as soon as I see it.

 

[Obryn]

Should I assume the player is using the DDI version of the minotaur? since the MM version is pretty much broken.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I'm letting another player try an MM race and a Dragon preview - a Doppleganger Artificer - but again, they're all aware that Dragon articles can both giveth and taketh away.

-O

 

[Obryn]

I'd hold off at this point for the 1 month until the final version of the class comes out. The version available now is a playtest class only, and I'm pretty confident that changes have been made to it in the PHBII. For example, the barbarian as released has a terrible AC, such that chainmail proficiency is a no-brainer feat, I suspect that they fixed that in some way.
Aside from that, I don't see any big issues with barbarians.

--Penn

I made it clear to the player that the Barbarian is just a playtest, and that he's going to be stuck with any changes to the class in PHB2.

I can't hold off for a month, since we're in that cozy character-swapping spot between modules right now, and the module in question has zero opportunities to go back to town and find a new PC. (

Spoiler

Pyramid of Shadows

)

-O

 

[abyssaldeath]

One thing that caught my dm of guard. I crit'd an enemy on an OA and killed him with the extra basic attack from "Rampage". I then used "Swift Charge" to attack an enemy across the battle field and killed that guy.

Since I made 3 attacks(1 OA and 2 free actions) he got confused about initiative order. It took him a second to figure out that it wasn't my turn and the rest of his monsters still needed to go.

Note: That was the only time I crit'd with an attack in three sessions.

 

[yagyuninja]

Apparently the barbarian pregen at the DnDXP had his CON mod added to his AC (I'm assuming only if he's wearing light armor) so I'm allowing the barbarian player in my campaign to do the same until we get the book and see for sure. He wasn't dieing before, but he was eating up most of the party's healing resources. Now he seems to be taking a more reasonable number of hits.

 

[Obryn]

One thing that caught my dm of guard. I crit'd an enemy on an OA and killed him with the extra basic attack from "Rampage". I then used "Swift Charge" to attack an enemy across the battle field and killed that guy.

Since I made 3 attacks(1 OA and 2 free actions) he got confused about initiative order. It took him a second to figure out that it wasn't my turn and the rest of his monsters still needed to go.

Note: That was the only time I crit'd with an attack in three sessions.

Yeah, I noticed there could be some awesome craziness with that.

Then again, his drow ranger was tweaked out the nose for damage, so I'll be perfectly fine with him doing just as much or more, but being within reach while doing it.

Apparently the barbarian pregen at the DnDXP had his CON mod added to his AC (I'm assuming only if he's wearing light armor) so I'm allowing the barbarian player in my campaign to do the same until we get the book and see for sure. He wasn't dieing before, but he was eating up most of the party's healing resources. Now he seems to be taking a more reasonable number of hits.

I'm not too worried. If it changes, it changes. I think it works pretty okay as-is.

-O

 

[DanmarLOK]

I used the character builder to auto generate a 19/20'ish character and I was a little surprised at the results. The recuperating strike at-will was at least as good and most cases better than the encounters that the character builder picked.

Let me get my post -

I made a 21st level Barbarian for the hell of it using the Autobuild function. Is it just me or are the powers for the barbarian broken? As an example for a Dwarvish Barbarian using AutoBuild set to 21st level.
Ignoring the ‘raging powers’ but just looking at some of the at-wills and encounters I see stuff like this -
At Will - Recuperating Strike - +20 attack 1d10+3d6+17 damage and gain 11 temp hit points. That’s an average of 33.5 damage for an At-will.
Encounter - Tide of Blood - +20 attack, 2d10+10 damage + 1 for each enemy adjacent up to 6. So an average of 21 damage plus up to 6. So a maximum average of 27 damage IF the barbarian has 6 enemies adjacent to him.
When are you EVER going to use the encounter power? The At Will averages significantly more damage even if the barbarian is surrounded.
Encounter - Vigorous Strike - +20 attack, 26.5 average damage and you gain +16 temporary hitpoints.
At level 21 just how good is that extra 5 temp hit points (over recuperating strike) going to be versus the 33.5 damage of the at-will? The level 21 monsters are doing around 15+ damage on average per hit with some kind of special effect (slowed, dazed, disease etc). So that 5 temp health isn’t even ONE THIRD of a single hits worth of average damage. So what’s better, absorbing 5 more points of damage or doing 7 more points of damage to the creature and getting rid of it?

 

[deleteme123456]

Tasty. And that's without fullblade (or Executioner's Axe or a Mordenkrad). Should be 2d10+3d6+17 (how did you get to 17? Mine went to 15, I could see getting STR up by 1 to 16...).