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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epametheus" data-source="post: 1365886" data-attributes="member: 719">A L20 fighter vs. a L20 Barbarian when they have identical equipment?Considering that barbarians aren't proficient in heavy armor (though I guess that wouldn't be a waste of a feat for them) and lose the use of several class abilities when wearing it (but those abilities would be useless against the fighter, anyways), I can see why that went in the barbarian's favor.I think under more normal circumstances, the fighter will win.  Barbarians in their light/medium armor normally have a much lower AC than a fighter will -- a L20 barbarian with a +5 breastplate would cap out at 23 (21 after Rage), while the fighter with +5 fullplate and a +5 shield would cap out at 31 or so.  With +5 weapons, weapon focus, and arbitrary Str scores of 30 for the Barb and 26 for the Fighter, we get attack routines of +36/+31/+26/+21 out of the Barb and +35/+30/+25/+20 out of the fighter, with the Barb getting another +4 to hit when he rages.  The fighter shall be a Bastard sword weilder, since he's a sword & board sort of guy.  So +35/+30/+25/+20 1d10+17 per blow.  We'll assume that our barbarian is properly barbaric and uses a great-axe, so +40/+35/+30/+25 1d12+26, with as much as another +40 from power attack if he goes for broke.Holy crap.A paladin, ranger, or druid going up against that Barbarian would be splattered in nothing flat, but Mr. Fighter spent a lot of levels getting options.  Lots of options.  And he'll need them, since barbarians HAVE improved enough from 3.0 to completely throw my expectations out of whack.The most obvious problem for Mr. Fighter that occurs to me is that if the barbarian crits him, especially on a 10 point or so power attack, the fight is basically over -- Mr. Fighter is NOT going to recover from taking 3d12+138 (!) on a single hit, especially since the best he can do is 2d10+74 on a return crit.  Mr. Fighter SHOULD be able to crit more often, though.Mr. Fighter's best option would be to put some distance between them, leave himself open for a power-attack from the barbarian, and hope that the the barbarian sacrifices enough attack bonus that an Improved Disarm attempt will actually work -- or if Mr. Fighter is feeling particularly brave, he can try to Sunder the barbarian's axe, since I'm not sure if he could keep the barbarian from reclaiming it on a disarm.  Otherwise, if Mr. Fighter has a 20 CON and maximum HP, Mr. Barbarian can probably splatter him in under 2 rounds.Well, crap.  I sure showed me  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> [spoiler]Endur's mounted archer that seems specifically geared towards fighting barbarians certainly has much better odds than a melee fighter does.[/spoiler]Edit: Oops.</blockquote>

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