Primal Power: Whirling Barbarian Spoiler

[Kez Darksun]

That sounds, to me, more like a controller. At least, controllers seem to wittle large groups of enemies with their area attacks.

Perhaps that version of the Barbarian has Controller as its secondary role. Again, too early to say for sure, just my impressions on reading the preview.

 

[Felon]

That sounds, to me, more like a controller. At least, controllers seem to wittle large groups of enemies with their area attacks.

There was comment a while back by the designers (Mearls and Noonan back in the days of their podcasts IIRC) that they ultimately decided that attributing AoE attacks to just one role ultimately didn't sit right with them, so now controllers are just guys who "mess with the enemy". Of course, that's the purview of leaders as well, but, y'know....I suspect barbs still won't have the AoE capability of sorcerers.

 

[Felon]

I know about that feat, and I don't particularly care for it. I don't want Barbarians to be able to have high AC, especially not for one feat.

I somewhat agree. The rationale for the high hit points and easy access to temp HP is that they don't have great AC...isn't it? I don't want another decathlete striker like the avenger.

Of course, truth be told, it's easy enough for a barb to get into scale mail with a couple of feats. That's what the barb in my group does, and it's tough to get even a couple of healing surges worth of damage out of him in a fight.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I somewhat agree. The rationale for the high hit points and easy access to temp HP is that they don't have great AC...isn't it? I don't want another decathlete striker like the avenger.

As you've pointed out, it's easy to get a str/con dedicated barbarian into heavy armor ... or alternatively, they don't favor con and put a bit into dex and have great armor anyway. Ultimately, players are going to gravitate towards having the Barbarian have good armor. At least with this feat, they can keep the "barbarian in light armor" feel they want, in addition to making the new dex-based build not too much better than the con based one (the charisma build however may need help ... but they might make a barbarian specific feat for it). Also, someone that goes dedicated str/con with this feat (instead of str/con/dex in hide) will have great AC, but be dump stating both Reflex and Will, which can still make the barbrian a "brute" ... just with better AC.

On a side note: We have a halfling barbarian in our party and he is self described as a tazmanian devil. This build of barbarian seems to fit that theme (while the charging pinball wizard str/con also works for what he currently does, this new one seems like it could do it even better).