Rage/Frenzy

[Classic Villany]

They are not all that bad.
I had a halfling frienzied berserker, and the parties motto was "let's just slap Fury Hillslaughterer in ass and throw him in the next room."

Wow, and here I thought I was probably the only one crazy enough to run a Small Frenzied Berzerker. I ran a Gnome Barbarian/Fighter/Frenzied Berzerker named Gau (named after the Finaly Fantasy 6 character) in one Campaign and had a blast with him.

The main reason I did it was just because I thought the idea of a Rabid/Frenzied Gnome was just too funny not to try. I had no idea how effective the combo was untill I got him into combat. I countered the strength penalty of being a Gnome and reduced damage from being Small by taking Monkey Grip to get a Medium Great Axe. Later on I ratched things up a little more with some Gauntlets of Ogre Strength. The Gnome's Con Bonus made by Rages and Frenzies last longer and combined with the large HD from my Classes gave me tons of HP.

More than anything he was fun to Roleplay. I decided to make him from a secluded tribe of Feral Gnomes to justify him being a Barbarian and from there I roleplayed him as kind of a combination of Animal from the Muppets, The Tazmanian Devil and Stitch from Disney's Lilo & Stitch. Gau had a particularly interesting relationship with the party Paladin. He would try converting Gau to Torm, Gau would spit on him and eventualy the Paladin came to believe spitting was Gau's way of expressing respect.

Gau would occasionaly run wild after the enemies were all dead, but eventually he would either gain control or be restrained by the party's Wizard before hurting anyone. Only once did he really go out of controll and kill some party members. Gau eventually regained his senses, but he didn't recieve any healing for a while. I don't remember how exactly but I do remember that the party members he killed were resurected.

Anyway, the Frenzied Berzerker is a double-edged sword. It can be used by PC's but IMO the player should really check with the party before taking it to make sure everyone playing is okay with it. If not, it could really mess up a game for people not prepared to deal with an indiscriminate killing machine that could easily turn on them.

 

[Sharkon]

The best you can do with a frenzy is take 2 lvl in fighter and the rest in barbarian so that you have enough feats and numbers of time you rage/day. Check the feat channeled rage : str modifier on will checks. The drawback is that you have to loose a use of the rage for that day but there are items and feats that grant you additional uses of rage. Anyway with that feat at lvl 9 i had a +20 will

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

There are other ways to help with the will save. Steadfast Determination feat...

The exalted rage feat is probably the closest thing to a definite "will not attack the party" counter you could find. Exalted FBs really shouldn't be that commonplace, though.

There is also Tome of Battle maneuvers. One of them, available to use at ECL 2+, or level 1 if you start in a martial adept class, allows you to as an immediate action use a concentration check instead of a will save, and 1 is not an auto-fail. Note that this would only help to avoid going into a frenzy, not any will saves the DM might ask for to try and keep yourself from killing your friends -- you cannot make concentration checks in a rage/frenzy. Also, since Concentration isn't a class skill for Barbarian or FB, you would need an adept class with a few levels, or a feat to make it a class skill, just to really advance your skill modifier. And unless you have an adept class to recover maneuvers, it could only be used once/encounter, which iirc means once every 5 minutes outside of combat. I think it follows the same guidelines as skill tricks in that regard...

The other ToB option, and MUCH more debateable as to whether or not it works is the Iron Heart Surge maneuver, which as a standard action allows you to end any one effect, condition, etc... affecting you that has a duration longer than 1 round or instantaneous. It could not be used as a reaction to a will save trigger, only after you enter frenzy. Which means a lot of people think you should not be able to take a standard action to use it, since you're in an involuntary psychotic killing frenzy.