Barbarian Handbook

[StreamOfTheSky]

Tiger Style/Tiger Pounce are pretty good. They let you negate hit penalty for all attacks (not just 1st) by reducing AC for a round.
Dipping Monk for Tiger Pounce is a better idea (Master of Many Styles) though.

Kinda hard to dip a lawful only class as a Barbarian.
Unarmed Fighter archetype is certainly an option, though.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Flesh Wound (Ex) - ...why?

Ok, see, I assume a barbarian is Rage Hopping by mid-levels, maybe you don't and that's affecting your ratings. But i have to completely disagree here. Even without hopping, dropping damage from an attack by half once per combat is a decent ability. But with hopping? Holy Crap! Once every single round you can ignore half the damage from an attack! And the other half becomes non-lethal. Which the Invulnerable Rager archetype gives double DR against! So at Barbarian 10, when you pick up this ability, your Invulnerable Rager is dropping the damage from any one effect by half once per round and having DR 10 against whatever nonlethal damage remains. Flesh Wound is IMO only behind Come and Get Me in terms of best Rage Powers.

Some other notes on rage powers:

I like Spirit Totem. Since the extra attack isn't being made by you, you get some leeway and can apply it at the start, end, or middle of your attack routine, however you see fit. You also can get it when not full attacking. I found that to be handy....

Knockdown is once/rage. Not an issue if hopping, but if you aren't, it uber sucks.

Superstitious is IMO an all or nothing path. Either you embrace it completely, use the human favored class option, get Ghost Rager, and be nearly untouchable by magic... Or you avoid it completely. Going half-assed just means mediocre benefits with potentially very annoying drawbacks. On that note...

Ghost Rager is awesome is going all-out. Your touch AC can get very obscene.

Intimidating Glare and Terrifying Howl are very good if you're going that route. I know you said as much, but I think you should rate the rage powers assuming builds that would benefit from them are the ones taking said powers. Barbarian is a very good intimidation build, especially if Cornugon Smash feat is available.

 

[Systole]

I'll reread Flesh Wound. I feel like I didn't read it right the first time. Same with Ghost Rager.

Will take your advice into consideration when I get around to totem powers. I wanted to separate them out.

Personally, I'm a fan of Knockdown, even at 1/combat. There's usually one BBEG per fight that really needs a trip, and the barbarian is usually the one who charged into his face. I'll consider downgrading to green, but you would have to work real hard to convince me to put it lower than that.

I'll put in rage-hopping as an addendum. I don't generally assume rage-hopping, because I feel the tactic is a bit underhanded. I'm only familiar with getting into it through Lame Oracle. Is there another way?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Lame Oracle is the easiest. Horizon Walker requires a 3 level deviation from Barb and a worthless feat, but doesn't cost you any BAB and also makes you immune to exhaustion. Both gain fatigue immunity at ECL 9. Of course, you might be tempted to dip Unbreakable Fighter 1 if going the Horizon Walker route.
The simplest but least useful method is to...just wait for Barbarian 17. Yup, even a core only Barbarian by RAW gets to eventually engage in this tactic, far from some sort of sneaky splat-abusing trick.

And I disagree it's underhanded. It would be if the 1/rage powers were really strong. But as you can see, they're really really not. I wouldn't bother ever taking any except Flesh Wound if it weren't for hopping.

 

[Starbuck_II]

You can't be a monk/barbarian. Barbarians can't be lawful. Monks can't be non-lawful.

Yeah, you totally can. Parthfinder allows you to change alignments. Who cares if you are an ex-Monk, you lose nothing.

Start Monk (go Non-lawful), go Barbarian (party)
Obviously a Str based Monk when you are a level 1 Monk. You can go 2 for evasion if that is your thing though.
If game starts at 3rd level even better: Ex-Monk 2/Barbarian 1 is all kinds of awesome.

Simple ways to stop being lawful: forget this mediating crap, stop keeping your word, be dishonorable, etc.
You do have find out what lawful is to your DM (this will vary), but the game allows you to change alignments.

 

[Systole]

Ok, see, I assume a barbarian is Rage Hopping by mid-levels, maybe you don't and that's affecting your ratings. But i have to completely disagree here. Even without hopping, dropping damage from an attack by half once per combat is a decent ability. But with hopping? Holy Crap! Once every single round you can ignore half the damage from an attack! And the other half becomes non-lethal. Which the Invulnerable Rager archetype gives double DR against! So at Barbarian 10, when you pick up this ability, your Invulnerable Rager is dropping the damage from any one effect by half once per round and having DR 10 against whatever nonlethal damage remains. Flesh Wound is IMO only behind Come and Get Me in terms of best Rage Powers.

I'm still not loving Flesh Wound. I admit it's better than red (especially with Invulnerable Rager/rage hopping), but you're still going to be eating the big attacks that you can't make Fort saves against (40+ damage kind of stuff). The way I see it, you're beating the small attacks that don't really matter, but it doesn't help you much when the $#!% hits the fan. I'll move it to grey and puts some caveats down.

Sorry if I forgot to mention about Tireless Rage at level 17. I did know that. I didn't know about Horizon Walker, though.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It can't negate big hits, no, but you should be pumping your fort save crazy high, enough to near guarantee moderate hits can be resisted. So you use it on the medium impacts, and reduce say...20 damage per round on average, between the halving and DR = barbarian level from Invulnerable Rager. Since your AC is garbage, you're probably getting hit every round, so you can use this.

Say the fight lasts 3 rounds. You just shrugged off 60 damage (and a bunch more became nonlethal and will freely get healed along with a corresponding amount of lethal damage when the CLW wand goes 'round). I...think that's pretty darn good. The longer the fight goes, the better it is. Barbarians usually suffer in the realm of staying power, so it's nice for that, too.


Also, I like the deep blue sky color you switched to. Regular blue is painfully hard to read on this forum, I was thinking of switching to a new shade for my own guide, might use that, it looks very nice against the black background.

 

[Gorgoroth]

more ragey goodness

Hi all, so we just started playing a new campaign and I'm playing an invulnerable rager barb. We just turned level 2, and I took superstitious which has already helped a ton. We have an Oracle of Life who life linked with me before I was raging and we believe the ability still works. This combined with DR 1 has helped a lot.

Question to the forum:

Exhausted state replaces Fatigued, right? Or does it add on top of it? In the wording of Roused Anger rage power, it says you can enter a rage even when fatigued but when you leave you are exhausted instead. If you're immune to exaustion, one level of Horizon Walker / desert plus Roused anger should get you rage hopping by level 6, correct?

I'm a little fuzzy on why anyone would even bother with any of this stuff if Allnight herb works. Does it? Or did they clarify it doesn't allow a barbarian to circumvent the fatigued condition, but just its effects.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Hi all, so we just started playing a new campaign and I'm playing an invulnerable rager barb. We just turned level 2, and I took superstitious which has already helped a ton. We have an Oracle of Life who life linked with me before I was raging and we believe the ability still works. This combined with DR 1 has helped a lot.

You don't have to save against effects that were already affecting you before you entered your rage, no. Only new spells cast on you.

Exhausted state replaces Fatigued, right? Or does it add on top of it?

I guess you could say it "replaces." It's a higher level of fatigue, basically. You usually hit fatigued before reaching exhausted, and normally have to go back to fatigued from exhausted before you can get to "no status ailment".

In the wording of Roused Anger rage power, it says you can enter a rage even when fatigued but when you leave you are exhausted instead. If you're immune to exaustion, one level of Horizon Walker / desert plus Roused anger should get you rage hopping by level 6, correct?

Well, for starters, HW requires 6 geography ranks, you you can even enter it until level 7...

Yes, it looks like Roused anger + HW 1 will let you rage hop. You will still be fatigued (but that will be suppressed while actually raging), and each time you jump out, Roused Anger will make you exhausted for a stupidly long time, then Terrain Mastery (Desert) kicks in and turns the exhaustion into fatigue, which Roused Anger then allows you to enter rage despite having...and the cycle repeats from there.
I really wouldn't do that unless you're sure being able to rage hop 2 levels earlier than you could otherwise is so important (like...game will end before you reach ECL 9, or will end shortly after that point). Roused Anger is a horrible rage power that becomes completely obsolete once you get fatigue immunity or pick up tireless rage, before then you're looking at easily close to an hour of exhaustion (fatigue w/ HW) after the fight, which sucks.

I'm a little fuzzy on why anyone would even bother with any of this stuff if Allnight herb works. Does it? Or did they clarify it doesn't allow a barbarian to circumvent the fatigued condition, but just its effects.

I have no idea what allnight herb is?
If you want another way to rage hop early, I recently noticed this gem on the 1st level Bard spell list (ie, 50 gp as a potion!): Invigorate - Pathfinder_OGC

 

[Qik]

Kind of late to the party, but props, Sys; kind of fun to see Daylily as reflected through this prism.