Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 1161960" data-attributes="member: 2486">No, but the likelihood is that when facing a raging barbarian in fairly light armour, the inclination of most opponents is to Power Attack unless they have a feeble to-hit, multiple iterative attacks or are two-weapon wielders.  Certainly most two-hander brutes are going to want to do so.I used to think this before I read an interesting argument about 'conspicuous targeting'.  The argument goes that enemy casters will target those against whom their spells are most likely to work.  As such, few casters will blow their top level save-or-dies such Finger of Death and Destruction on the barbarian- they will target the rogue and the wizard first and other classes with poor Fort saves.  The barbarian is likely to be targeted by Will-based spells.With Reflex saves, however, 'conspicuous targeting' is less of an issue.  Because most high level Reflex saves are from area effect spells, the caster is likely to encompass as many of his enemies as he can, thus the barbarian will be forced to make the save.All things being equal, therefore, the notion of 'conspicuous targeting' would imply that the barbarian actually has to make *fewer* Fort saves than Ref saves- the notion of the high-Con high-Fort barbarian is a solid deterrent against targeting individual Fort-based spells against the barbarian (there are a few mass Fort save spells, but they are usually extremely high level).That's very true.  The optimised AC for a barbarian is mithril full plate (medium armour) + Dex 16 or more, so a +4 Dex item is likely to cap out if the 13 in placed in Dex.What must be borne in mind, however, is KarinsDad's notion of surviving through the low levels.  A +4 Dex item costs 16,000gp, and is not first on the barbarian's list of must-buy items.  As a barbarian I would be surprised if I spent more than 10% of my total resources on Dex-boosting items, and this figure is slightly generous.  Your assets won't reach this level until at least 15th level.Of course, area effect spells usually have a Reflex save and targeted damage frequently required a RTA...and speaking of RTAs, Dex helps you against those annoying non-HP damage rays which can cripple regardless of Con, such as Enervation, Ray of Exhaustion and Ray of Enfeeblement.</blockquote>

Verification