Pathfinder Query - Dwarven Barbarian

[VanIsleKnight]

I was looking through the races and classes, trying to think of something that would be really fun to play and thought that a dwarf/barbarian mix would be ludicrously hilarious. Short lived, but still fun as heck to play. The problem is that I almost never play small creatures because I dislike the movement penalty, so I was kind of dismayed to see that the dwarf only had 20 speed.

- Slow and Steady: Dwarves have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by armor or encumbrance.

But then I saw that barbarians have fast movement as a supernatural ability, which would boost my dwarf's speed up the normal 30, which made me happy!

- Fast Movement (Ex)

A barbarian’s land speed is faster than the norm for her race by +10 feet. This benefit applies only when he is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor, and not carrying a heavy load. Apply this bonus before modifying the barbarian’s speed because of any load carried or armor worn. This bonus stacks with any other bonuses to the barbarian's land speed.



Now my question is this. Am I able to have a land speed of 30, even if I'm wearing heavy armor or am encumbered, due to the dwarven ability of their speed not being affected by armor or encumbrance, and because it says that I apply the bonus before modifying the barbarian's speed because of any load carried or armor worn? (in which case I wouldn't modify the speed at all because, well... you get it.)

[Sophismata]

Now my question is this. Am I able to have a land speed of 30, even if I'm wearing heavy armor or am encumbered, due to the dwarven ability of their speed not being affected by armor or encumbrance, and because it says that I apply the bonus before modifying the barbarian's speed because of any load carried or armor worn? (in which case I wouldn't modify the speed at all because, well... you get it.)

No.

Wearing heavy armour or being encumbered will not reduce your base speed as normal, but will disable the Fast Movement ability, effectively slowing you down.

[Starbuck_II]

I was looking through the races and classes, trying to think of something that would be really fun to play and thought that a dwarf/barbarian mix would be ludicrously hilarious. Short lived, but still fun as heck to play. The problem is that I almost never play small creatures because I dislike the movement penalty, so I was kind of dismayed to see that the dwarf only had 20 speed.

- Slow and Steady: Dwarves have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by armor or encumbrance.

But then I saw that barbarians have fast movement as a supernatural ability, which would boost my dwarf's speed up the normal 30, which made me happy!

- Fast Movement (Ex)

A barbarian’s land speed is faster than the norm for her race by +10 feet. This benefit applies only when he is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor, and not carrying a heavy load. Apply this bonus before modifying the barbarian’s speed because of any load carried or armor worn. This bonus stacks with any other bonuses to the barbarian's land speed.



Now my question is this. Am I able to have a land speed of 30, even if I'm wearing heavy armor or am encumbered, due to the dwarven ability of their speed not being affected by armor or encumbrance, and because it says that I apply the bonus before modifying the barbarian's speed because of any load carried or armor worn? (in which case I wouldn't modify the speed at all because, well... you get it.)

No, because you apply this before modifying for armor: and Drawfs ignore armor speed change.
But it only works in meduim armor not heavy.

[HCL]

Uh dwarves arent small.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Uh dwarves arent small.

The OP didn't say that, he said that he didn't play small races because of the decreased movement speed and that he was dismayed by Dwarves having the same penalty.

[daggaz]

Is that an exact quote from pathfinder about dwarf speed? Interesting that they change it from the SRD which quotes "this speed never changes" due to heavy loads etc.. I would say that in pathfinder, you can have a dwarven barbarian in medium (but not heavy) armor with 30ft speed. In 3.5 they get slowed back down to 20..

[ShadowFighter15]

Is that an exact quote from pathfinder about dwarf speed? Interesting that they change it from the SRD which quotes "this speed never changes" due to heavy loads etc.. I would say that in pathfinder, you can have a dwarven barbarian in medium (but not heavy) armor with 30ft speed. In 3.5 they get slowed back down to 20..

The dwarven base land speed is 20 in Pathfinder, same as in 3.5. Actually speed-wise the dwarves didn't change between 3.5 and PF; they both have a 20ft base movement speed that isn't hindered by armour or encumbrance.

I would have to say that the barbarian fast movement gets disabled by heavy armour or by carrying a heavy load, regardless of racial abilities since the class feature specifically states:

This benefit applies only when he is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor, and not carrying a heavy load.
The line after that is just saying that you do it before armour penalties to speed; just because a dwarf can ignore their armour slowing them down doesn't mean they can ignore the quoted line.

[AgentPaper]

By RAW, the dwarf still doesn't get the 10ft movement bonus. The dwarven ability prevents heavy armor from reducing the dwarf's speed, but that doesn't matter because the barbarian ability will never increase the dwarf's speed in the first place when he's wearing heavy armor. It goes like this:

- Dwarf base land speed is 20ft.
- Dwarf is wearing heavy armor, so speed is not increased by 10ft.
- Dwarf ability prevents speed from reducing due to heavy armor.

Basically, the dwarf's ability prevents the speed from going down, but the heavy armor is instead preventing the speed from going up. As opposed to the normal speed reduction from heavy armor, which takes the normal speed and tries to reduce it by however much, which is prevented by the dwarf's ability.