Barbarian Building!

[Yellow Sign]

I am creating a barbarian character for City of the Spider Queen. He is going to start at 10th level. I intend to give him ambidextery, two-weapon fighting, and improved 2 weapon fighting. This is mainly because I have a cool barbarian mini with 2 weapons. Here is my question. Should I multi-class him with some fighter levels to get some more feats, add a level of ranger to get the virtual two weapon feats, or just stick with all Barbarian levels.
Looking at a barbarian alot of his good stuff comes at higher levels (after 10) so if I multi class him it would take that much longer to get them. There seems also to be a "dead area" of special abilites in the 6 to 9 level area for the barbarian. What do you think?

 

[kreynolds]

Here's the standard response I give my players...Write your backstory. If you find it's too big of a pain in the butt trying to explain how you got all those classes, and you felt it wasn't necessary to increase your skill in some of them, such as leaving your ranger at 1st level for no explainable reason, then by all means, go for it.

 

[gfunk]

I would recommend the following level progression:

Barbarian 5/Ranger 1/Fighter 4

This way you can get the best of what a Barbarian has to offer at lower levels (Rage 2x day and both Uncanny Dodge abilities) as well as the Ranger's virtual feats and 3 more bonus feats from a Fighter.

Of course, you need to be careful with multi-classing to avoid an XP penalty. Also, your Reflex and Will base saves will suck. You may need to take Iron Will at least to avoid being dominated, charmed, or held on a frequent basis.

Also consider dual-wielding two of the same weapons, like short swords or hand axes. This way you can take advantage of "double-dipping" with Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and Improved Critical feats.

 

[hong]

I would recommend the following level progression:

Barbarian 5/Ranger 1/Fighter 4

One day, I will see someone take more than one level of ranger... one day....

 

[Yellow Sign]

Personally, I thought that grabbing one level of ranger is too tweaky for my tastes. There is one thing to build a good character and another to try and build the "perfect" character. I am personally leaning to just a straight 10th level barbarian. That way I can get those higher level barbarian abilities faster. I just worry that I would lag behind any "pure" fighters with out some extra feats. In my mind a barbarian and fighter should have the same combat effectiveness but do it in different ways. But from what I have read a fighter tends to out fight a barbarian at higher levels. Is this true?

 

[Apok]

Well, the most common method would be to take that one level of Ranger and get the TWF/Ambidex for free. I know alot of people consider this extremely cheesy and min/maxy but hey, I didn't make a front loaded Ranger class; I'm using what WotC provides me. Besides, 3e is all about multiclassing to achieve the character you want with no restrictions and a straight Barbarian doesn't get many feats to work with. By taking that one level of Ranger you are saving yourself three feats, four if you count Track which is a nice extra bonus.

Other than that, I'd stick with straight Barbarian for the rest since Greater Rage and the flat DR are very nice at higher level, especially since you can upgrade the DR using Epic Feats and the non-epic one from MotW. There are also tons of cool feats out there that work off of your Rage ability. Check out Path of the Sword and AEG's Mercenaries for a few. Another idea would be to look into the Singh Rager PrC from Oriental Adventures. I haven't really looked at it myself (don't own the book) but I hear it's a nice PrC for a Barb.

 

[Darklone]

One day, I will see someone take more than one level of ranger... one day....

Hong, I played a Barbarian/Ranger usually with 2 or 5 barbarian levels ... was lotsa fun. It's a nice way to get all those nifty skillpoints and some healing

Yellow Sign: Yes, a pure fightertype with heavy armour and stuff tends to be a wee bit better at fighting than a ranger or barbarian. (Even better than a ranger with Favored Enemy humans)

But look at all those nifty skills I got

Plus faster movement, immunity against pesky rogues (sneak attacks) and so on.

As for building that barbarian: Get Exotic Weapon proficiency Bastard sword or Dwarven waraxe and dualwield two of those. In rage you still hit and whack wonderfully

 

[kreynolds]

One day, I will see someone take more than one level of ranger... one day....

My most hated player has multiple levels in ranger. Kills everything I put in front of him. I hate him. A lot.

 

[hammymchamham]

One day, I will see someone take more than one level of ranger... one day....

In the group I play in we have lvl 10 Ranger. He's really good at the bow (almost always hits on the first arrow), and is good at weilding a bastard sword/short sword if he gets in melee. Its played by an 11 year old kid, and for an 11 year old, he does really good. (I'm 23 which is what most of the people in the group are, the 11 year old is the step son of a 38 year old in the group)

 

[The Souljourner]

I would recommend the following level progression:

Barbarian 5/Ranger 1/Fighter 4

Hello! Bad Idea. Do you really want a 20% XP penalty for the rest of your adventuring career? Me neither.

I recommend going all Barbarian, or ranger 1, the rest barbarian. Saving a couple feats from the ranger's abilities is probably worth moving the barbarian's abilities back a level.

As for fighters out fighting barbarians.. I don't think this is really true. In straight out combat they're pretty much the same by level 10. barbarians can get weapon focus, power attack, cleave, and great cleave, and really what else do you need for feats? Is whirlwind attack really all that and a bag of chips? Nah. Barbarians get their rage, which more than offsets the fighter's specialization. The only drawback to barbarians is their armor restriction.

At least, in my experience, barbarians are on pretty equal footing with fighters.

-The Souljourner