Fighter vs. Barbarian

re

Well no, I prefer my characters alive, unless they're undead, and if they're going to die, I'd rather it not be sudden or trivial. If Weapon Specialization had a 1% chance of killing the Fighter every round he used it, I'd never ever make a Fighter either.

Death is part of the game. You want a safe game, then house rule it. I don't want a safe game. If a barbarian enters a psychotic rage, he should risk dying just like the barbarians of old.



Sounds like a flavor reason to me...

So designing archetypes appropriately is flavor to you? It isn't to me. It's simulationist. It's trying to capture the realism of the ability. If that's what you call flavor, then we have completely different ideas of what flavor is. So we'll never agree on that.

It's saying "If a barbarian is unconscious, should he be able to maintain a psychotic rage?" The answer is no. Thus the mechanic should fit the ability. In this case it does.

It is inappropriate that a barbarian can maintain rage while unconscious. Unrealistic and inappropriate is the word I would use.


Two feats, one of them incredibly crappy, on a class with no bonus feats, just take make his primary class feature less suicidal? Of course, that STILL doesn't protect him from effects that make you unconscious on a failed save, like the Sleep spell.

Neither feat looks bad to me.

Diehard lets you fight to massive negatives.

Raging Vitality gives you an extra hit point a lvl and higher fort save.



I completely disagree, and even if the feats did fix the problem, it's far too much of a cost, the class feature should just work right from the start.

It does work right.

It isn't too much of a cost. Both methods provide a decent benefit to a barbarian.

Even the prereq of Endurance allows the barbarian to sleep in his medium armor. Which is huge in a campaign unless you never bother to catch your players unaware out of their armor. That happens quite often in our campaigns. They get ambushed while sleeping all the time.

Sounds to me like you don't like the change form 3E because you want to lower your risk of death. Well, if you play a berserker, you should be at risk of death.

The berserker's of old usually did what they did and expected to die. Berserking was usually the last stand of a warrior. He was going to amp up, usually with drink, and then go all out until he bit the farm.

The barbarian rage ability simulates that well. I encourage my barbarian player to remain in character all the time which means he is at risk of death.

This is a ROLE-PLAYING game. The role of the character comes first. Not mechanical safety.

If you're interested in staying alive and having a safe character, then don't play a psychotic barbarian berserker. It wouldn't fit your personality. Play a safe arcane caster or rogue or something. Fighters, barbarians, and paladins are the type of classes that throw themselves into the fray to the death.

A berserking barbarian the most insane of all of them as he throws himself into battle with complete, psychotic abandon with no thought of his own life. The currently designed rage ability simulates that quite well. Which is the intent of the game and quite right...very, very right. It's how a role-playing game should be designed with the role-playing before the game aspect.

If you want a safer game and don't care about closer simulation of psychotic rage including the chance of death, then house rule it differently. I like the fact that the barbarian might die when coming out of a rage. That fits the archetype.

And that is not flavor as you like to call it. It's simulation.

What you want to do is purely game mechanics without regard for simulation. You want to make something safe mechanically, even if it doesn't properly simulate the ability. Not what I want to see Pathfinder do myself.
 

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Death is part of the game. You want a safe game, then house rule it. I don't want a safe game. If a barbarian enters a psychotic rage, he should risk dying just like the barbarians of old.

...

The berserker's of old usually did what they did and expected to die. Berserking was usually the last stand of a warrior. He was going to amp up, usually with drink, and then go all out until he bit the farm.

The barbarian rage ability simulates that well. I encourage my barbarian player to remain in character all the time which means he is at risk of death.

History has nothing to do with it. Or I would suggest for wizards to be just con-men with no real magic... just like the wizards of the old.


So designing archetypes appropriately is flavor to you? It isn't to me. It's simulationist. It's trying to capture the realism of the ability. If that's what you call flavor, then we have completely different ideas of what flavor is. So we'll never agree on that.

QFT. And being a simulationist is nothing inherently better than being a gamist!

It's saying "If a barbarian is unconscious, should he be able to maintain a psychotic rage?" The answer is no. Thus the mechanic should fit the ability. In this case it does.

It is inappropriate that a barbarian can maintain rage while unconscious. Unrealistic and inappropriate is the word I would use.

And characters dying for using a core ability I call not fun in a game whose whole purpose is to have fun. And that bothers me more.

... Even the prereq of Endurance allows the barbarian to sleep in his medium armor. Which is huge in a campaign unless you never bother to catch your players unaware out of their armor. That happens quite often in our campaigns. They get ambushed while sleeping all the time.
...
The best medium armor is only 1 point better than the best light armor... when mithral is available it is also already the time magic made resting save.

And that is not flavor as you like to call it. It's simulation.

What you want to do is purely game mechanics without regard for simulation. You want to make something safe mechanically, even if it doesn't properly simulate the ability. Not what I want to see Pathfinder do myself.

Weak and unbalanced classes and abilities are bugs, not features.
 

The best medium armor is only 1 point better than the best light armor...

2 armor bonus; PF breastplate is +6 armor, not +5.

Unless you meant armor + max Dex, in which case breastplate is 1 better than chain shirt. Of course that assumes your barbarian is going to casually have a 16 or 18 Dex; I'm not sure how common that is (outside of very nice ability score generation methods).
 

Death is part of the game. You want a safe game, then house rule it. I don't want a safe game. If a barbarian enters a psychotic rage, he should risk dying just like the barbarians of old.

"Barbarians of old"? Seriously, what the hell are you talking about?


So designing archetypes appropriately is flavor to you? It isn't to me. It's simulationist. It's trying to capture the realism of the ability. If that's what you call flavor, then we have completely different ideas of what flavor is. So we'll never agree on that.

It's saying "If a barbarian is unconscious, should he be able to maintain a psychotic rage?" The answer is no. Thus the mechanic should fit the ability. In this case it does.

It is inappropriate that a barbarian can maintain rage while unconscious. Unrealistic and inappropriate is the word I would use.

Why is it unrealistic? A barbarian could be put to sleep but still have angry dreams, thrashing about on the floor in an unconscious state.

I'm calling it flavor because it's not for mechanical or crunch reasons that it was changed. Unless you actually think a Barbarian not losing his rage from going unconscious breaks the class somehow. It's not simulating anything, there's nothing in reality like a rage, the closest thing is an adrenaline rush, which shares very little things in common with rage, as rage is presented mechanically.


Neither feat looks bad to me.

Diehard lets you fight to massive negatives.

Raging Vitality gives you an extra hit point a lvl and higher fort save.

The sucky feat I was referring to was Endurance, actually. Diehard is an ok feat. Raging Vitality, however, is a bad feat. The +1 hp per level is only on loan for while you rage, it's much worse than actually getting +1 hp/level via Toughness (a pretty below average feat in its own right, IMO). +1 fort while raging....meh. The real reason to take Raging Vitality is to patch the broken rage mechanic.


It does work right.

It isn't too much of a cost. Both methods provide a decent benefit to a barbarian.

Even the prereq of Endurance allows the barbarian to sleep in his medium armor. Which is huge in a campaign unless you never bother to catch your players unaware out of their armor. That happens quite often in our campaigns. They get ambushed while sleeping all the time.

AFAIK, mithral breastplate still counts as light armor in PF, you just need to have proficiency in it. So even without endurance, the Barb can sleep in mithral breastplate, just not mithral full plate. But he's not proficient with full plate and wouldn't be wearing it anyway, so... *shrug*

Sounds to me like you don't like the change form 3E because you want to lower your risk of death. Well, if you play a berserker, you should be at risk of death.

How is keeping the rule that's been in place for 8 years lowering my chance of death? Maintaining 3E's rules about what ends rage maintains status quo, incorporating the new PF rules increases risk of death.

The berserker's of old usually did what they did and expected to die. Berserking was usually the last stand of a warrior. He was going to amp up, usually with drink, and then go all out until he bit the farm.

The barbarian rage ability simulates that well. I encourage my barbarian player to remain in character all the time which means he is at risk of death.

This is a ROLE-PLAYING game. The role of the character comes first. Not mechanical safety.

If you're interested in staying alive and having a safe character, then don't play a psychotic barbarian berserker. It wouldn't fit your personality. Play a safe arcane caster or rogue or something. Fighters, barbarians, and paladins are the type of classes that throw themselves into the fray to the death.

A berserking barbarian the most insane of all of them as he throws himself into battle with complete, psychotic abandon with no thought of his own life. The currently designed rage ability simulates that quite well. Which is the intent of the game and quite right...very, very right. It's how a role-playing game should be designed with the role-playing before the game aspect.

If you want a safer game and don't care about closer simulation of psychotic rage including the chance of death, then house rule it differently. I like the fact that the barbarian might die when coming out of a rage. That fits the archetype.

And that is not flavor as you like to call it. It's simulation.

What you want to do is purely game mechanics without regard for simulation. You want to make something safe mechanically, even if it doesn't properly simulate the ability. Not what I want to see Pathfinder do myself.

Rage isn't safe, you take a -2 to AC and make yourself a major target by virtue of being an unstoppable rampaging killing machine. If I want to RP my Barbarian as reckless, I'll do that. If the rules want to force me to RP the rage as suicidal, they can make it work like Frenzied Berserker and remove the player's control of when it starts, when it ends, and who is and isn't safe from you.

Are you saying that the Barbarian used for the entire duration of 3E and widely regarded as one of the most flavorful classes as well as one of the better designed melee classes was actually poorly designed and didn't fit th archetype?

And your whole berserking "was usually the last stand of a warrior" is a total load of bs. In both PF and 3E, rage is the barbarian's core class feature. Even MORE so in PF, where 90% of his other class features, rage powers, ONLY work while raging! It's not his last stand, it's his damned PLAN A! And B, C, and occasionally D. Plan E is to try hitting it harder. And the historical Viking berserkers? That was also their plan A, not last stand. They got all amped up and crazy, fought hard, tried to scare enemies into fleeing, and plundered. It's pretty freaking stupid to go on a raiding expedition expecting to die, don't you think? They may have been prepared with the possibility of dying, but so are most good warriors.
 

Stepping aside from the argument a moment, I did recently notice one cool shtick a high level (more specifically, level 17+) Barbarian has at his disposal to justify sticking with the class for the long haul. Possibly their best "capstone" ability that they get. I'd like to dub the practice, "Rage Hopping."

One change PF made that was awesome and overdue from 3E was to change Rage such that it specifically allowed a Barbarian to enter new rages in the same encounter, as long as he isn't fatigued or such. Because at level 17, you get Tireless Rage. In 3E, even at 17, in a very long "single encounter" like a war battle, even a level 17 Barbarian was so out of luck once his rage ran out. He was barred from entering a new one by RAW, no matter how much time elapsed or how silly it got. With PF, that is no longer an issue. Now, as for this "trick," note that entering a rage and leaving one are both free actions. Logically, your rage has to last at least one round, so you couldn't hop in and out infinitely many times but merely once per round. Which is good, I hate infinite loops. Anyway...this means that a whole slew of once/rage rage powers that were formerly very poor -- mediocre in usefulness (none surpass mediocre, IMHO) become at least one step better and either reach the vaunted status of "useful" or jump to "powerful." I review the options below:

[sblock]Clear Mind: I'd be hesitant to take this in a pre-17 game, it's somewhat situational. With Rage Hops, though, a save reroll once/round is pretty good! Well worth it for a high level game.

Mighty Swing: Decent in its normal use, with Rage Hopping the Barb is now auto-confirming once/round if he can roll high enough to threaten. Still seems underwhelming compared to Fighter 20's Weapon Mastery, but...3 levels earlier counts for something, right?

No Escape: Extremely situational, and IME enemy withdraw actions are so rare that using it once/round will seldom make a difference. It's sort of ok for use as a normal rage power, but hopping doesn't really bolster it any.

Powerful Blow: Even if I were starting at 17 and right from the 1st session could use this ability once/round, I still wouldn't pick it. Awful.

Strength Surge: Heavily benefits from rage hopping. A high combat maneuver check once/combat is fairly underwhelming, once per round is made of awesome and win!

Surprise Accuracy: See Powerful Blow, this one's very faintly better, but still not enough to actually learn.

Unexpected Strike: Once a foe realizes you can't be flanked, I don't see this triggering very much. Further, once you use this the first time, he's unlikely to fall for it again. So this is subpar normally and I don't think hopping improves it at all. Has some potential with reach weapon shenanigans possibly. Specifically, if you have a weapon to attack adjacent (like a rage power for natural weapons), could be useful with superior reach to keep stepping backwards each turn and forcing the foe to give you a free whack.

APG powers:

Lesser Elemental Rage: This power uber sucks normally, basically a tax to get Elemental Rage. Hopping makes it feel like less of a waste, but there are better uses of your swift/immediate by level 17.

Energy Eruption: WAAAAY too costly in pre-reqs to consider normally. But with hopping and a friendly arcanist, this could be a really sweet dual tech!

Flesh Wound: Pretty decent choice normally. With hopping, it becomes like supplemental DR and over the course of a long day could probably prevent hundreds of points of damage. Best rage hop combo, IMO.

Ground Breaker: I personally like it, but it's of questionable use. That it precludes attacking for the round (standard action) means having it every round per day isn't necessarily an improvement.

Knockdown: Knockback is once/round, strangely this was a crappy once/rage. Oh well, rage hop makes it quite usable. Great combo with strength surge.

Smasher: In combat, you're destroying treasure. It's a decent out of combat ability to break things in your way, but rage hopping adds nothing since out of combat you can just spend 3 rounds (one raging, two fatigued) retrying without being pressed for time generally.[/sblock]
 

Rage powers are utterly infuriating. Here we have something that lets us inject awesome directly, be it things from mythological battle rages or things from books or video games or movies or whatever.

Instead we get rage swimming.

Such wasted potential.

Also death to class-as-identity.
 

Rage powers are utterly infuriating. Here we have something that lets us inject awesome directly, be it things from mythological battle rages or things from books or video games or movies or whatever.

Instead we get rage swimming.

Such wasted potential.

Also death to class-as-identity.

Sorry, but represent rage powers with rage swimming only is asinine.

One both core and APG are filled with good rage powers. Bonus to maneuvers and strenght checks, maneuvers + damage, pounce, mount boosting, control effects based on terrain and fear, natural weapons, anti caster feats, hit-boosting feats, saves vs spells from +7 to + 13 at level 20.

Yeah, raging climber, swimmer ect sould have been merged in one. But Barbarians and Rage powers are far more than that.

And sincerely, Cirno, you always say "deat to alignments", "death to classes", death to this, death to that. Just play another game if you don't like it, and don't even bother to take a look with a slight deep to its features.

StremOfTheSky: yeah, I noticed it. Assuming it has not been errata'ed, it's the reason I always say that barbarians get the real capstone at level 17 instead of level 20.
 
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StremOfTheSky: yeah, I noticed it. Assuming it has not been errata'ed, it's the reason I always say that barbarians get the real capstone at level 17 instead of level 20.

From what I've seen, the less broken a combo is or less powerful the class that benefits from it is, the more likely it is to get eratta'd, so I wouldn't be surprised. Paizo already went and eratta'd monk's Imp. Natural Attack availability and the incredibly-mindnumbingly-awesome-yet-still-not-that-powerful-because-it's-a-freakin-level-20-monk-we're-talking-about-here combo of Cloud Step + infinite Slow Fall distance. Oh, and Vital Strike + Spring Attack, because Spring Attack needed to be kept in check lest it become close to worthwhile. Meanwhile, powerful spells remain untouched and cruddy ones got ridicu-nerfed (like Forcecage) :(
/side rant
 

Even if I like a lot the game, I agree with your analysis.

Little semi-patch fo the monk INA: there is a druidic spell able to improve natural attacks by two steps.

An enlarged monk wit that buff could improve the Unarmed Strike by three steps. More fun is is four wind and has vital strike - 6 ki points for 3 Vital Strikes in one round with damage die increased.

A little convolute and nothing earth shattering, but..

(doubt: I can understand concerns about spells like simulacrum not clarified or addressed, but forcecage has a save now IIRC)
 

Forcecage has a save negates, had the duration cut to 1/1200 of what it used to be, and can now be broken by smashing it enough. The material component cost was reduced to 1/3 the original. But at 500 gp and a level 7 slot, it's still too much gold to ever justify using, especially now that it gained the awesome trait of not even lasting long or resisting sword thumping attacks and retained the awesome trait of being thwarted by any teleportation spell at all. I just mentioned it because it was just such a blatant and utter nerfing of something that was never very broken to begin with (another good example was what they did to Ray of Enfeeblement). Not that I have a problem with Baleful Polymorph (I actually rather love that spell and am glad it wasn't changed), but the fact it wasn't even touched and these other spells were is just crazy. And I'm not going to get started on the monk...

Forcecage
Forcecage :: d20srd.org
 

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