Barbarian is up!!!

[Andor]

Gah, so much gnashing of teeth and so many odd workarounds for Rage Strike. Wouldn't the easier, more elegant way of doing it just be removing the "Must already be raging" condition? Trading an unused Rage power for the damage seems Rage-y enough to me.

*shrug*

That does seem elegant. It acomplishes the goal, it makes the power usable at level 1, and it allows idiots to waste the ongoing power of the rages for a big hit. It may even pay off once in a while. It will also amuse many GMs when Joe Spamhead drops his only rage to really, really, really kill a minion.

 

[Kishin]

I guess I'm not seeing a problem with Rage Strike. To me, it's just a shorthand.

The designers could have instead put a Special line into all Rages. Something like...

Special: If you are already in a Rage, you can expend this Daily power in a single attack, doing X[W] damage. You gain no other benefits from this use of the Rage, and you stay in your current Rage uninterrupted.

Rather than throw that into each and every power, they made it a class feature. There's no mechanical difference between the two approaches; just arguments about 'elegance' that could be made on both sides of the equation.

-O

This.

A thousand times this.

 

[Kordeth]

This way you still exchanges cool effects for damage, but can use the cool effect by one turn at least.

Any thoughts?

As has already been pointed out, this effectively gives the barbarian more daily powers than any other class. Consider: A first-level ranger can drop one daily power per day. Let's say he chose Hunter's Bear Trap. Once per day, he can drop 1[W] + Stat damage, plus ongoing 5 damage and a slow effect on a target.

Now consider the 1st-level barbarian: Using your rule, he can, once per day, use--let's say Bloodhunt Rage. Once per day he can drop 3[W] + Str damage and gain a bonus to damage against bloodied folks or when he's bloodied. Then, later on in the fight, he can end the Bloodhunt Rage and throw down another 3[W] + Stat damage. That's twice as much offensive power at the daily scale than the ranger.

If you don't like the Rage Strike mechanic, the only suggestion that's been made so far that keeps the barbarian balanced is adding the rule that you can choose to maintain the rage Effect of your active rage when you use a second daily encounter.

EDIT: I take it back, I missed Merlin the Tuna's suggestion. It actually might make rage strike a bit of a trap, but it doesn't unbalance the class.

 

[That One Guy]

The strikers in the PHB1 have bonus damage dice from a class feature but Barbarians have powers that just do more damage. This will create a multi-classing problem when other classes swap for these powers to boost their damage. The powers should really only do this extra damage when accompanied with a class feature so it cannot be gained via multi-classing. Multi-classing to a Ranger, Rogue or Warlock only provides a boost to damage once per encounter but to a Barbarian gives you the ability to boost damage for each power swapped. This is opposed to what I thought multi-classing was about in 4th edition, although I don't want to get into the multi-classing debate here, just pointing out the difference I noticed.

Maybe barbarian is designed as an attractive dip for STR oriented characters of other classes?

That does seem elegant. It acomplishes the goal, it makes the power usable at level 1, and it allows idiots to waste the ongoing power of the rages for a big hit. It may even pay off once in a while. It will also amuse many GMs when Joe Spamhead drops his only rage to really, really, really kill a minion.

Agreed. I think Merlin's fix would take care of the problem. I think a mini explanation or side bar about how the feature's use is intended would be useful.

I still want somebody to build a few characters to compare. If nobody has by next week I'll pretty much have to. ...but it'll be very lonely.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Gah, so much gnashing of teeth and so many odd workarounds for Rage Strike. Wouldn't the easier, more elegant way of doing it just be removing the "Must already be raging" condition? Trading an unused Rage power for the damage seems Rage-y enough to me.

*shrug*

You got my vote.

 

[Goonalan]

Just rolled up "Spatchcock" Orc Barbarian Level 1, sorted out his token and macros for MapTools- game on tomorrow night. He's 18 Strength and armed with a Maul (with Weapon Focus Hammer to increase the damage) 2d6+5, +6 To Hit mostly- been doing some practice rolls to warm the macros up for tomorrow, the (Human) Ranger and the (Goblin) Rogue in the party have better to hits and can do potentially more damage (Rogue is Brutal 2d8+3 on Backstab). Actually just playing around with the all the strikers then the Rogue (potentially- not as reliable) and Ranger hit more often and for more damage, have better AC, and the Ranger nearly the same hit points. I'm not an optimiser of characters, I just go with the ones I like the feel of, anyway will report back, playing through RPGA DALE1-1 The Prospect.

Cheers.

 

[Kishin]

Not nearly as good as when they are raging. If I was playing a Barbarian, I would never waste a daily on a nova attack. You want to be able to rage in as many encounters as possible. Which makes Rage Strike a rather pointless power.

Sometimes, you really, really need to cave in something's face. Fast.

I don't see how people aren't seeing how it a) is necessary to allow them to use more than one daily a fight, like other classes can and b) Provides a tactical option for spike damage when spike damage is called for.

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

Why not simply change the raging strike power to a backstab or hunter's quarry style class feature? Perhaps something like, "While raging you can choose to deal +2d6 damage to one target" (and scale it up just like backstab)

Then you can bring all the rest of the powers back in line with other striker damage scaling so that they multiclass without a problem.

And for those who would say "but then the barbarian only matches other strikers whwn he is raging, which he can only do X times per day at low levels"...you are right, and I haven't come up with a solution yet, but at high level, he could rage almost every other encounter and keep one rage for the boss at the end of the 13.33 encounters...

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Rogue with starleather armor: 28 AC
Barbarian with elder hide armor: 22 AC
Barbarian with spiritmail armor: 28 AC
Fighter with elderscale armor: 29 AC

Man, I forgot how goofy the 4e armor names were ;p


Thoughts on Barbarians, mostly parroting what others have said:

- With this and the spellsword class, I think we're seeing a definite power creep, and it's one that's already starting very early on.
- Lots of stuff here is poorly written, and I think there's one in particular we're ALL talking about. Even if you personally don't see a problem with it, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people do.
- One of the things we heard in 4e development was that races would be different but equal; an elf fighter and dwarf fighter would play very differently, but one wouldn't be inherently better then the other. I think this was mostly geared towards making the classes very MAD, which, in their defense, they were - at the least, classes would need have three main attributes, which would give a good racial diversity. I think barbarians break that though; they really don't need a lot of stats, at least from what we've seen so far, and as such there IS the problem of one master race for barbarians.
- Barbarians, due to chainmail, start off inherently with one less feat

 

[Duelpersonality]

4) Striker with defender hitpoints. I absolutely applaud this. I do NOT want the classes to become so straightjacketed by rules that we sacrifice good class design for conformity. This was the problem with monsters in 3e, writers found it hard to make good monsters that had to conform to the formula.

Now I'm not saying the barbarian is currently balanced with defender HP, but I'm sure it could be. But I do not want roles to become the tomb for good class design, and I'm pleased to see WOTC is willing to push the envelope a bit on this one.

Looking at it again you're right. I can certainly see where getting locked into one mindset for any rules design is going to be a bad thing.

I could get behind this for a barbarian, especially if they can somehow fix the chainmail issue. Perhaps a feature not unlike the armor restrictions that the tempest fighter has?

I would still prefer that raging be the barbarian's extra damage mechanic, kicking in an extra 2d6 once per round for a negative 2-4 defense penalty or something similar. I think that would effectively solve the armor issue all by itself and get the "easy to hit, hard to take down" effect they seem to be shooting for. You could still tack on the neat effects for the daily rages on top of that, but you have to keep raging to keep the effect.