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View Full Version : [4e] Battlerager Fighter with AP: plate?



Faleldir
2009-11-26, 01:41 PM
What does a Battlerager Fighter gain by only wearing light or chain armor? The damage bonus is good, but if you're doing your job, you'll be looking for ways to lose your temporary HP almost every round. Wearing chainmail means you'll need at least 15 DEX at Paragon, which isn't hard to do, but still MAD. If you wield a hammer, more CON usually means more damage anyway. The only downside I can see is metagaming: you have to be a significant threat to enemies, and they have to think they can hit you. Am I missing something, or is the extra damage not really worth it?

Yakk
2009-11-26, 02:41 PM
The extra damage is an extra threat to opponents.

See, you already have decent AC (try going hide armor expertise if you start with 18 con, which can match scale AC). On top of that, you have temporary HP. Both of which discourage monsters from attacking you.

The battlerage "you do extra damage when you have temporary HP" feature means that if they don't clear off your temporary HP, you are more of a threat.

If you go Plate, your AC goes up -- discouraging creatures from attacking you. And you lose the extra incentive "I do less damage when I lose my temporary HP" feature to beat on you (just to get rid of the temporary HP).

Monsters should, in general, always consider not attacking the fighter. It should be a bad idea to ignore the fighter.

Possibly after investing in stuff to make ignoring you a bad idea (Vigilante Justice and Opportunistic Axe to make the threat of ignoring you nastier) going Plate makes sense.

And "you are hard to hit, so I ignore you" isn't always metagaming. (it can be, if it happens before they make "knowledge" checks/try to hit you/before noticing you are covered in plate, but it doesn't have to be).