Meet Rose Burrfoot:
Female 1/2ling
(lightfoot), LG
Barbarian Lv6
(Ancestral Guardian), Folk Hero.
(Str:14 Dex:16 Con:18 Int:13 Wis:9 Char:14 breastplate, shield, hand axe. Not pictured: 2nd hand axe, orcish spear & explorers pack.))
4th lv Feat: Healer
Rose Burrfoot is not at all your typical angry, destruction driven, carnage loving, giant weapon wielding, barbarian.
She's a friendly, civilized 1/2ling of about twenty who hails from a cozy little crossroad inn, who, due to her own foolish actions, spent the last winter enslaved by the Bad Moon orc tribe.
(she HATES orcs)
Very recently she was rescued when a group of adventurers repelled one of the tribes spring raiding parties & backtracked them into the mountains to the lair.
The adventurers, with Rose in tow, returned to town & collected their reward. The next morning they gave her 100gp, wished her good luck getting home (wich is quite a ways away) & headed off on their primary quest. Solving the local orc problem had merely been a side trek as they passed through.
Rose is NOT an adventurer by choice, let alone a professional one.... Merely trying to get home to the Wildwood Inn in Karemiekos.
Rose is also not really a skilled fighter.
One of the things the orcs liked to do was throw her into a pit with assorted wild animals & a hand axe/spear/etc. They found her terrified flailings hilarious....
I have her
always fight recklessly (Reckless Attack) to simulate this lack of training.
Rages.... Starting on round 2 or 3 I begin making Saves vs Fear. Eventually Rose fails & goes berserk, hacking at whatever's within reach - friend or foe.
(this works sooo much better in PF where there's a really awful arch-type made to do exactly this - be a danger to everything within reach)
Ancestral Guardian path. Modified by the DM.
When Rose rages she's surrounded by several spectral orcs who protect
her,
not the rest of the party. She doesn't see them, only allies/enemies do.
So atm, the 1st creature trying to hit me does so at disadvantage, & I'm required to use my reaction to block 2d6 of the 1st damage I'm dealt. This is not under my control as a player. I'm OK with that.
These spectral orcs are also the "source" of Roses S/P/B damage resistance when raging.