Barbarian: Rampage and Swift Charge

[Nikosandros]

What happens if a rageblood barbarian deals a critical hit that also brings the opponent down to 0?

Must he choose between the free attack and the free charge or can he first take the attack and then charge?

 

[Mort_Q]

The latter, unless the DM decides to limit these particular free actions.

The trigger for rampage is the crit, and the trigger for swift charge is dropping the baddie. Of course, rampage is only useful if there is another baddie within melee range.

 

[Eldorian]

How we play it is that if an event triggers two or more bonus actions then the controller of those actions chooses which ones goes first. E.G. the barbarian who crits and kills a guy can choose to charge someone then make a basic attack, or can make a basic attack and then charge. The crit and the dropping a foe to 0 hp were triggered by the same action.

 

[zoroaster100]

That makes sense to me, in terms of how I read the rules. I don't know whether it is too powerful yet. We just had one player start playing a barbarian today, and everyone was amazed by how much damage he dished out. Not to say it was overpowered, but we were all impressed. As DM, I'll keep my out on whether this character is overpowered, or just very effective.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I'd go with "barbarians are easy to build/play."
High strength, 2-h weapon, all power choices = kill 'em dead ... all from just being sensible.
It's quite difficult for a barbarian to be ineffective.

Other characters, warlords for instance, tend to require greater knowledge of mechanics and anticipation of the opposition's actions, as well as having build "options" that seem to work on paper but gimp the character.

To approach the question of "is this class overpowered?" you can mean 1 of 2 things.
1) The average barbarian outperforms the average PC.
2) An optimised barbarian outperforms other optimised PCs.
I'm inclined to go with #1 likely being true, whilst #2 being untrue.

Oh yeah, and on the subject of the OP, there's no limit on how many things can be simultaneously triggered, so the barbarian would get to choose the order to resolve them in.

 

[Trebor62]

What happens if a rageblood barbarian deals a critical hit that also brings the opponent down to 0?

Must he choose between the free attack and the free charge or can he first take the attack and then charge?

You would get both but you would make the Rampage attack from the hex where the triggering critical was scored and then make your rageblood free charge.

 

[Orcus Porkus]

It's also really important to note that Rampage only triggers when hitting with a barbarian attack power, while Swift Charge triggers regardless of the power that downed an enemy.
For the sake of drama and fun, we rule that Rampage and Swift Charge can take place in any order.
Also worth mentioning here is the feat Charging Rampage in Paragon.
You can turn the Rampage free attack into a charge, which means you can use Howling Strike and all the goodies that optimize a charge attack. The chance to hit and dish out tons of damage will increase a lot, particularly with combos where you crit on 19 and 20, like Jagged weapon, or Draeven Marauder.
With attack powers like Storm of Blows (CON = # of attacks), Rain of Blows I tend to go the "crit fisher" way now (jagged), rather than damage output (bloodclaw, reckless).
The extra attacks from critting are pure joy in the game, and now you can even charge when it happens? Can't wait for the game to try it out.