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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4646067" data-attributes="member: 704">I think that at this point, its not unreasonable to compare the 'Cannonical Dwarven BattleRager' of 4th edition to the 3rd Edition Spiked Chain.The Spiked chain was a basically ok weapon that because of its built in ability to threaten every square within 2 of the player, suggested certain exploits which could be devastating in the right combat encounters.  If you had High Str, great cleave, and a spiked chain, you could one shot every low hp creature within reach on a single AoO.  Or you could build it out so that you could use Combat Reflexes, Spring Attack, and Improved Trip to make it nearly impossible for a single opponent to close into melee range unless he could reliably defeat your opposed trip rolls.Of course, if your DM used enemies that were not vulnerable to a 1 shot from your character, or used archers, or just used Disarm / Sunder on you, he could defeat the tactic fairly trivially.  It was only a problem if it broke the sense of immersion at the game table, or if your DM was particularly attached to the kinds of opponents that the build ruled ineffective.Now you have the 4th Edition Dwarven Battle Rager build.  You can set yourself up to become essentially an indestructible brick vs every minion your likely to face.  Sure, your going to have a lower AC, but the minions cannot overcome the temp HP your character can generate.  You might miss more often, but you WILL outlast your opponents.Of course, this tactic is really only effective against melee minions that fulfill the Brute / Soldier role.  It does not prevent the minions from protecting whatever other monsters there are within the encounter, nor does it prevent the heavy hitters from trying to unload on the Battle Rager.I suspect that the Rager may indeed have a serious flaw, but I am not in a position to comment usefully on it since I have not seen it in play.Even if it is more broken in practice than the 3rd Edition spiked chain, it does seem to have that same quality of 'most likley to be disallowed' about it.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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