Some good alt Barbarians

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, now that I'm home, the longer list:

Major Drawbacks:
> Immobile (see Dwarven Defender)
> Can't concentrate (PHB Barbarian)
> Can't take offensive actions (attacks, spells that affect enemies)
> Fail all saving throws
> Take 50% more damage from all sources while in trance
(We keep thinking up more as we go along.)

Minor Drawbacks:
-2 STR
-2 DEX
-2 CON
-1 to all saves (it's too easy to avoid if it's -2 to one save)
-2 to AC
-2 to all attack rolls
1/2 base movement speed
Fatigued for remainder of encounter
Trance duration decreases by 3 rounds
Requires standard action to enter trance
Cannot voluntarily end trance
Take (1d6 + 1 per character level or HD) Subdual damage when trance wears off

Bonuses:
Level 1:
+2 to one of (STR / DEX / CON / Fort / Ref / Will)

Level 5:
Evasion (improves to Improved Evasion if you already have Evasion)
+10' base movement
Hardness 1 (like DR X/-, but against any source, including elemental spell damage, and stacks with any DR)
Trance duration increases by 2 rounds
Low-light vision x2 (if you already have low-light vision, increase the distance multiplier by 1)

Level 9:
+2 to one of (INT / WIS / CHA)
Flurry (works on any weapon)
Gain one temporary HP per character level when trance begins
+1 to all skill checks
Darkvision 30' (if you already have darkvision, increase distance by 30')

Level 13:
remove one Minor Drawback (cannot be selected multiple times)
+2 to ranged attack rolls
+2 to melee attack rolls
May go into trance a number of additional times per day equal to your CHA modifier
Mettle of Fortitude (as Evasion, for Fort saves)
Mettle of Will (as Evasion, for Will saves)

Level 17:
+2 dodge AC
+2 natural AC
+2 melee damage
Add 2 to one of STR, DEX, or CON, selected at the start of each trance activation

Forgot to add: at level 1 it's 3 bonuses, 1 Major Drawback, and TWO Minor Drawbacks, not three.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Interesting read, Spatzi.

In the Black Company Campaign Setting, they introduce the Zealot, which has the Righteous Wrath ability. Its effects are:
+2 to Will saves
+4 to Initiative
+30' to land speed
-2 to AC
+1 attack at max bonus when taking the Full Attack action.
Lasts as long as barbarian rage
Zealot is dazed at the end of his Wrath.

As for replacing Rage by Favored enemies... IMO, Rage > F.E.

AR

 

[Spatzimaus]

In the Black Company Campaign Setting, they introduce the Zealot, which has the Righteous Wrath ability

Haven't seen that one, but you could pretty much build it the same way. The "+1 attack at max bonus" is basically Flurry combined with "+2 to attack", and the +4 Initiative would fit into the table just fine at level 5 or 9. In fact, I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to add that one from the start.

The main balance problem we've had is that -2 AC is seen as a more severe drawback than most of the others. But, it's still workable. Also, both the Dwarven Defender and the Zealot you mention are Dazed instead of Fatigued at the end of their duration, but Dazed is a less severe condition, so it wouldn't really fit in to the table as written.

I also forgot to mention one other rule. If there's ever a conflict on overlap, it goes major>minor>bonus. That means, if you pick Immobile as your major, you can't take 1/2 move as a minor or +10' movement as a bonus. If you didn't pick that for your major but did take 1/2 move as a minor, you can't take the +10' move bonus until you remove the drawback. And this also means that if you took -2 STR as a minor drawback, you can't take the +2 STR bonus until you remove the drawback, because the minor supercedes the bonus.

The reason was, we wanted the barbarian to ALWAYS have at least one major and one minor drawback. If it were possible to effectively overwrite a drawback with a bonus, players would metagame more. They'd take things like "-2 STR" and "-2 CON" as their initial drawbacks, take "+2 STR" and "+2 CON" as two of their three level 1 bonuses, and then have only the major drawback to deal with while they accumulated bonuses (and not have to "waste" one of their high-level bonus slots removing a drawback).

Anyway, it was good, in practice. One player wanted something a bit more well-rounded than the PHB Rage, so he went like this (doing this from memory, don't have the sheet):
Major: Take +50% damage from all sources
Minors: Take 1d6+level subdual when wears off, -1 to all saves
Bonuses: Started with +2 STR, +2 DEX, +2 CON. I think he added +2 DEX, Hardness, +10' movement, Flurry, temporary HP, +2 melee attack rolls, remove the -1 save drawback, +2 melee damage, and the selectable +2 stat boost.

Basically, this "trance" made him a fantastic swordsman for the duration, at the cost of effectively reducing his HD to a d8. It wasn't a "rage" thing at all; he justified it as connecting with the ghosts of his samurai-like ancestors, letting them control his body for a minute.
I also had a Barbarian/Ranger NPC who used a trance focusing on the +skill and vision-improvement bonuses more, to act as a sort of "stalker" kit. He had the "can't attack" major, since he'd disable the trance before combat.