I would consider this a worthy houserule to try. Its still a good amount of extra hp you are likely to have, but no where near as strong as it is now.
Battlerager....Overpowered?
- Thread starter Stalker0
- Start date
I would consider this a worthy houserule to try. Its still a good amount of extra hp you are likely to have, but no where near as strong as it is now.
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Assuming a point-buy, it seems that Dwarven Battleragers with hammers could be just as effective at lock-down fighting if they invested in the "Devoted Defender" feat and pumped up their Wisdom to a 12-13 before the racial ability bonuses.
While they'll still lack the accuracy in normal combat, they'll get a nice bonus for their OA's and Combat Challenge that makes up for both the long sword proficiency and the fighter weapon talent & even a minor strength difference that comes from from putting a few points into different areas later on & won't have the uber-lopsidedness that comes with buying up to and 18-20.
Add in the stacking ability based damage bonuses for Str/Con that comes with the encounter powers, and you are outputting alot of damage most rounds rounds in addition to the Temp HP.
Assuming a point-buy, it seems that Dwarven Battleragers with hammers could be just as effective at lock-down fighting if they invested in the "Devoted Defender" feat and pumped up their Wisdom to a 12-13 before the racial ability bonuses.
While they'll still lack the accuracy in normal combat, they'll get a nice bonus for their OA's and Combat Challenge that makes up for both the long sword proficiency and the fighter weapon talent & even a minor strength difference that comes from from putting a few points into different areas later on & won't have the uber-lopsidedness that comes with buying up to and 18-20.
Add in the stacking ability based damage bonuses for Str/Con that comes with the encounter powers, and you are outputting alot of damage most rounds rounds in addition to the Temp HP.
Bagpuss
Legend
Nope because they will be doing Brash Strike a lot of the time for the +2 bonus to hit, since they can ignore the damage.
Bagpuss
Legend
Right but where it is now it needs radically pulling back.
ki11erDM
Explorer
This is exactly why I think this path is just to good. Going to switch my fighter to this build and play test it to see if some of the assumptions we are making are right in my game.
eamon
Explorer
Note that with crushing surge non-battle ragers can have quite a few temp-hp as well. And for non-rager's, crushing surge is paradoxically actually even better than for ragers. Sure, it stacks for ragers, and that's great. On the other hand, rager's often already have enough temp HP, and crushing surge isn't that useful then. On the other hand, non-ragers need to spend more effort getting temp-hp.
So a reasonable comparison might be between a battle-rager and another Con-based build. The con-based build would probably use things like Crushing surge and unyielding avalanche or boundless endurance to maintain hit points, which can work quite well. A rager is still pretty good, but it's not like a non-rager can't compete at all.
WalterKovacs
First Post
A con-based fighter build is probably best served choosing battlerager. That doesn't mean that battlerager is the best build for fighter, just the best build for con-based fighters. Going con-based has a number of associated costs, it means going with +2 prof weapons, pumping two stats for the save defense, etc. Damage may not matter, but you'll be getting hit by conditions quite a lot. Your AC will probably be no different, and your Fort will be just as good as most other fighters probably, but your Will and Reflex will probably lag a bit behind (at least one will be lower than a dedicated STR/DEX or STR/WIS fighter).
Let's try to quantify this. Let's suppose a Fighter hits with 2 Invigorating powers per encounter and gets hit 3 times in melee per encounter, for a total of 5x Con temporary HP, and they are fully used up. I imagine the Fighter might gain more temporary HP than that, but also some of it will be wasted. In any case, these should be fairly conservative assumptions.
Consider a Level 30 Fighter with 26 Con. He has 217 HP. He'll gain 40 temporary HP per encounter, which is 18% of his HP. He basically gains two extra healing surges every three encounters.
This doesn't seem to change much over the levels. Consider a Level 10 Fighter with 18 Con. He has 114 HP. He'll gain 20 temporary HP per encounter, which is 17.5% of his HP. Again, two extra healing surges every three encounters.
With the Dwarf Stoneblood and Improved Vigor feats, the temporary HP per encounter figures go up to 67 and 31. That's 30.9% and 27.2% of their HPs, or more than one extra healing surge per encounter.
Note that the high temporary HPs gained even with a low number of melee hits taken means limiting Battlerager Vigor to once per round might not be very effective.
Consider a Level 30 Fighter with 26 Con. He has 217 HP. He'll gain 40 temporary HP per encounter, which is 18% of his HP. He basically gains two extra healing surges every three encounters.
This doesn't seem to change much over the levels. Consider a Level 10 Fighter with 18 Con. He has 114 HP. He'll gain 20 temporary HP per encounter, which is 17.5% of his HP. Again, two extra healing surges every three encounters.
With the Dwarf Stoneblood and Improved Vigor feats, the temporary HP per encounter figures go up to 67 and 31. That's 30.9% and 27.2% of their HPs, or more than one extra healing surge per encounter.
Note that the high temporary HPs gained even with a low number of melee hits taken means limiting Battlerager Vigor to once per round might not be very effective.
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Nail
First Post
Just so we're clear: The Wisdom adjustment to attacks is only for OAs. Attacks from Combat Challenge are NOT opportunity attacks.
Nail
First Post
Stacking those THP is key. Lot's of attacks do lots more than 4 damage, but fewer attacks do (on average) lots more than 8.
...at low levels, anyway.
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