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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4496043" data-attributes="member: 2067">I like how everyone has the same vision of what a Barbarian should do, we're mostly just disagreeing on whether that is done by Strikers or Defenders.I think you're underestimating it. A two-handed weapon is, first of all, ALL ABOUT trading defense for offense. And I think that a barbarian can gain many advantages with a two-handed weapon a la a rogue with daggers. Whirlwind attacks that clear a room. Knocking creatures prone. Pushing creatures with the force of blows. Massive earthquakes from hitting the ground with your axe. Soaring leaps that take him over the heads of defenders right back to the squishy rear ranks. A barbarian, IMO, shouldn't just have a two-handed weapon. He should be using it as much as possible to kill the other guy. That offense-minded mentality works best with a striker. 3e doesn't matter. If the designers' vision of a barbarian matches up with mine, Athletics checks will be their friend, so to speak. Charging mandates mobility, and there's nothing more Berserker than charging into the heart of battle, axe flailing wildly, foam on your lips. The other guys that stand in your way get mowed down, pushed aside, jumped over, or slain in passing. You break down walls. You are the unstoppable force, not the immovable object.In a nutshell, that's the core idea behind a berserk rage -- you run into your foes screaming, throwing them to the four winds and hewing off limbs. A rage is not a defensive strategy. It says "I don't care if I get killed!"Actually, AC does kind of matter. A mark's primary function is to get people to attack targets that they would otherwise probably pass by. Even Swordmages get fighter-caliber AC. And that AC is usually pretty nice, likely one of the highest in the party. That means that enemies normally wouldn't bother attacking you, but the mark forces them to (in a way) by making up the difference to the rest of your party. Without a high AC, there's no reason to mark. You're already a good target, because an enemy that can hit you can do other stuff to you, including pushing you and pulling you away from the people you're supposed to be defending. And that -2 to hit other people just means that other people are now even harder to hit than you are. If the mark affected damage, this might be okay, but it doesn't penalize damage. Just the attack roll (not that a barbarian's theoretical mark couldn't penalize damage, too, really). The biggest issue in favor of a striker-barbarian is that a barbarian should not be standing in place asking people to attack him. Instead, he should be catapulting himself and his enemies across the battlefield, demanding that people run away from him. When the barbarians are at the gates, you know those gates will fall. When raping and pillaging is done, it is a failure of defense. When you are the victim of a barbarian raid, you have not protected yourself. This is aggressive, this is destructive, this is them coming to get you. That all speaks to a striker in my mind.If the barbarian IS a defender, it will have been a failure to capture that flavor of raid-pillage-rape-destroy that is so integral to the fun of playing a barbarian. Barbarians are not DEFENSIVE archetypes. They are wolves at the borders. They are OFFENSIVE archetypes. They should be going out from their homeland to destroy civilization (and upend defenders), not staying at home asking the enemy to come get them.</blockquote>

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