Help making a berserker?

[Villainy]

Our DM is going to be running a quick, oneshot dungeon crawl. Level 12 characters, 32 pt buy, 88k gold. Build whatever we want with the core books and classbooks (including Complete Warrior).

I was thinking of going with a Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker and was wondering if anyone had some advice.

I'm going with a dwarf, to help with the CON score, a level of fighter to offset losing a feat due to not being human, 6 barbarian levels and then going straight berserker for the remaining 5 levels.

Does this sound like a good plan? As far as feats, I grabbed Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Destructive Rage, Intimidating Rage, Weapon Focus (Greataxe)

 

[Asmo]

The Frenzied Berserker is truly a powerhouse, but it ruins the game pretty fast when you kill off your party members.
Trust me on this one: it´s not fun.
A horrible PRC.


Asmo

 

[Camarath]

It is not a bad class IMO as long as the other players are ok with it and Deathless Frenzy is run properly. As far as I can see nothing in the Deathless Frenzy ability allows the FB to ignore the consequences of nonlethal damage (which the FB suffers 2 points of a round while in a Frenzy).

 

[Asmo]

Camarath wrote:

"It is not a bad class IMO as long as the other players are ok with it and Deathless Frenzy is run properly."

I simply don´t belive that any group of players " are ok with it" when they realize what a threat he´s to the party. I would never play in a game with a FB in it. How fun would it be to play when you know that the first time the FB takes damage and fails his save, the possibility is very high that someone in the party get killed?

Asmo

 

[Creeperman]

It is not a bad class IMO as long as the other players are ok with it and Deathless Frenzy is run properly. As far as I can see nothing in the Deathless Frenzy ability allows the FB to ignore the consequences of nonlethal damage (which the FB suffers 2 points of a round while in a Frenzy).

Nothing except common sense, that is. Considering a Frenzied Berserker takes nonlethal damage while in frenzy, and considering that a character falls unconscious after accumulating nonlethal damage in excess of your current (not maximum) hit points, ruling that Deathless Frenzy does not supress nonlethal damage removes the whole point of the ability. The character would still fall unconscious at zero hit points (actually well before zero, thanks to the frenzy effect), as normal, and would wake up just as dead, either through sheer damage, a successful coup de grace, or the loss of rage hit points a half-dozen rounds later.

 

[Arc]

Recommendations (from experiance with the class):
Be a human. The extra feat can get you extended rage, which makes up for your lesser constitution.
Be a fighter 6/barbarian 1. The fighter feats available to you are incredibly useful to a FB, who doesn't need to get 2 rages/day (frenzy works well enough). Don't worry about uncanny dodge. Better yet, talk your DM into allowing the Kensai variant fighter from Dragon #310, which gets Rain and Storm of Blows. So powerful, it hurts.
Use a greatsword, or another 2 handed weapon. Get weapon focus, and every to hit bonus possible. Your ideal is to have an insane attack bonus... which translates into an obscene damage bonus once you power attack.
Get your saves up, and have Death Ward active. The FB's weakness is save or die spells, and losing strength and constitution. Once those stats start to fall, the FB loses power exponentially.
Make your party be able to run faster than you can! This one is key!

 

[Camarath]

Nothing except common sense, that is.

Whether or not the ability is pointless it does not prevent one from falling unconscious when your nonlethal damage exceeds your current hit points.
Unless of course you think can scorn means the same thing as is immune to or can ignore the effects of.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I hope that dungeon isn't cold and has lots of food. Otherwise you may find yourself taking small amounts of nonlethal damage. And you know what that means... FRENZY!!!

Asmo
I simply don´t belive that any group of players " are ok with it" when they realize what a threat he´s to the party. I would never play in a game with a FB in it. How fun would it be to play when you know that the first time the FB takes damage and fails his save, the possibility is very high that someone in the party get killed?

I've seen people try two ways around this:

1) Have a terrible Will save. Needless to say this doesn't work in combat very well, but at least it lets the wizard waste a 5th-level spell to "calm" you down.

2) Have a great Will save. Why did they even bother trying to include a drawback to frenzy?

My suggestion would be to go straight barbarian. The 3.5 barbarian is really strong (I've DMed one from 15th to 17th level, and seen one in action from 1st to 7th level...) and I don't see why WotC thought it was necessary to put out another PrC to make it even stronger.

Indomitable Will alone is a good reason to go straight barbarian... two more levels to go for that one, plus the DR is pretty nifty.

 

[Balgus]

I was thinking of going with a Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker and was wondering if anyone had some advice.
(Greataxe)

Have you thought of taking a couple more fighter lvls to get Weapon spec? You lose a couple rages, but the +2 makes up for that real quick- and also the extra feat.

Plus, If you are going Berserk, I would buy the Sword of Berserk, cursed item in DMg. That wouls save you the PRC lvls. Instead, you can invest them somehwre else to get other abilities.

And also, have you thought of OA? Singh Rager. It is sort of a toned down Barb, but better fort save.