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Eldariel
2010-11-22, 10:17 PM
Soo, the recent Barbarian-threads just got me thinking about Barbarian-class and what I'd want out of it. Made me make up a build:

Half-Minotaur* Dragonborn Earth Dwarf (+6 Str, -4 Dex, +6 Con, -2 Int, +2 Wis, -2 Cha)

Stuff: Wings Aspect, Quick Trait (we can save 20 HP, but we kinda need the speed), Random Flaws (w/e)


Barbarian 2/Fighter (Pugilist) 2/Fist of the Forest 1/Deepwarden 2/Frenzied Berserker 4/Runescarred Berserker 9

Pugilist ACF Fighter [DR310] (loses Shield Profs and some skills and gains both, IUS and Endurance on level 1)
Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian [CC]
Hit'n'Run Fighter [DoTU]
Whirling Frenzy Rage Variant [UA]

Feats are something like:
1. Power Attack
Flaw. Survivor
Flaw. Wolf Tribe Berserker
Pugilist. Improved Unarmed Strike
Pugilist. Endurance
3. Devastating Rage
Fighter. Cleave
Deepwarden. Track
Otyugh Hole. Iron Will
6. Intimidating Rage
9. Steadfast Determination
12. Imperious Command
15. Combat Reflexes
18. Improved Trip

Due to being lazy, I decided to give him Magical Christmas Land™ Stats:
24 Str
14 Dex
24 Con
16 Int
20 Wis
16 Cha

These become:
28 Str (+4 Inherent)
18 Dex (+4 Inherent)
34 Con (+5 Inherent)
20 Int (+4 Inherent)
24 Wis (+4 Inherent)
20 Cha (+4 Inherent)

Yeah, that's pretty much whole of his WBL burned on just toming every single stat. He'll probably want a Belt of Battle or a hundred and that's about it. Maybe a Legacy Weapon; that'd cover basically everything.

Skills are pretty much maxed Spot, Listen, Survival, Intimidate and prerequisites.


So, what's this guy's deal? Well, for one, he makes a good run for the guy with the most prerequisite feats ever. Fully 8 of his feats are prerequisites for one class or the other. Other than that though, he's basically a base-Barbarian with a bunch of abilities I feel the Barbarian-class should come with in a nutshell. List of the big ones:
- 2d6 Unarmed Strike Damage
- Con to AC over Dex
- Con to AC when Unarmored
- Cannot die while in Frenzy
- Rage 4/Day, Frenzy 2/Day (yeah, should really have Extra Rage there somewhere)
- DR 3/- (yawn, whatever)
- Raw +28 Fort & +24 Will-save; raw as in no magic. Assuming Fractionals, otherwise higher.
- 2 extra attacks while Raging & Frenzying.
- Ability to disable Magic around him.
- Life within 20' of him kinda sucks. Tripping AoOs and all that good jazz (lacks Thicket of Blades, alas)
- Intimidates people automatically when Rages, Intimidated people Cower.
- Charge with decent range for full attack and lots of pain.
- Decent Initiative and all that.
- Uncanny Dodge, obv.


Basically, I went for the Guy You Really Don't Wanna Fight In AMF here. Seems to be Barbarian's shtick more or less; so much brawn you don't need brain.

So what's the purpose of all this? No clue, just felt like writing it down and seeing what it looks like. The initial statistics are fairly good: Being immortal for a duration comes with obvious upsides as does being able to shut down magic. Having lots of magic-like buffs and all that leads to the following summary under AMF:

AC: 39 (10 + 12 Con + 12 Con + 5 Natural Armor), 41 with Whirling Frenzying, 37 while Frenzying (DR 3/-)
Attack: Guisarme +34/+34/+34/+29/+24/+19 for 2d6+22, Trip +27 (for comparison, Big T is +33) OR Unarmed +33/+33/+33/+28/+23/+18 for 2d6+15
HP: 12+d12*17+d10*2 + 12*20 (-20 for Quick) = 353
Speed: 40', Fly 40' (Average)
Saves: +28 Fort, +15 Ref, +24 Will

+30 Spot, Listen, Survival, Sense Motive; +28 Intimidate


So, the idea is you move up to hit someone with Belt of Battle, burn the action to throw down an AMF and beat people up in it. Only things I'm annoyed by not being able to fit there are Shock Trooper (which could take over the Combat Reflexes-package, I suppose) and Elusive Target (which would obviously make killing you in an AMF a pain).

The high Touch AC is really just there to make mages bother using True Strike to hit you with an Orb or whatever; obviously won't slow them down for long but hey, never hurts to try!


So yeah, I feel the normal Barbarian is a bit...meh. Doesn't do enough interesting crap. Immortality while in Rage? That's interesting. Anti-Magic? that's cool. Skin so tough it blocks lazers? Hell yeah! Too bad it's all race dependent and all that but that's the kinda character I'd love to play one day. Just damn all those prerequisites...


* I'm "rationalizing" Half-Minotaur here to not include the size increase score changes. Perfectly legit Template that way.

Tvtyrant
2010-11-22, 10:23 PM
What is the LA on that thing?

Dusk Eclipse
2010-11-22, 10:26 PM
+1 from half minotaur, AFAIK Earth dwarf means the environmental races in the SRD/UA and they are the (mostly) the same as standard races. And dragonborn is just a pseudo template.

Eldariel
2010-11-22, 10:33 PM
What is the LA on that thing?

It's +1 but I assumed buyoff here; it's only 3000XP anyways.

Analytica
2010-11-22, 10:39 PM
Needs more Ur-Priest. You know, for that shamanistic bent... :smallbiggrin:

Eldariel
2010-11-22, 10:41 PM
Needs more Ur-Priest. You know, for that shamanistic bent... :smallbiggrin:

But then I'd have to make it an Ur-Priest Initiate of Mystra and I have no idea how the hell that works.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-11-22, 10:53 PM
.... IIRC the spellplague in the realms was due Mystra's death right? then play during the spellplague and use the adaptation section to be an ur-priest of a death goddess.:smallwink:

Psyren
2010-11-22, 10:55 PM
Looks like Grease could ruin this guy's day, or am I missing something?

Tvtyrant
2010-11-22, 10:55 PM
As a wizard killing monster is does its job extremely well. It would tear up any real spell-caster like they were rice paper. However, they have the singular weakness that its best ability is AMF, which won't help much against a Pit Fiend. In fact, the Pit Fiend gets stronger relative to you when its in an AMF, since you don't get your buffs and it doesn't need them.

Also, you would be removing a lot of your groups ability to fight this way, since it is in an AMF and so immune to your casters. I would like the hear about how one runs though, since I could be completely wrong and it might be able to six a Pit Fiend in a few hits.

faceroll
2010-11-22, 11:05 PM
Looks like Grease could ruin this guy's day, or am I missing something?

It flies, thanks to the wings. It's a dragon-minotaur-dwarf-earth elemental or something.

It's cool that this is possible in the current system, but unfortunate with all those hoops you've gotta jump through. Races of War has a pretty sweet barbarian. Can break magic and stuff.


As a wizard killing monster is does its job extremely well. It would tear up any real spell-caster like they were rice paper. However, they have the singular weakness that its best ability is AMF, which won't help much against a Pit Fiend. In fact, the Pit Fiend gets stronger relative to you when its in an AMF, since you don't get your buffs and it doesn't need them.

Also, you would be removing a lot of your groups ability to fight this way, since it is in an AMF and so immune to your casters. I would like the hear about how one runs though, since I could be completely wrong and it might be able to six a Pit Fiend in a few hits.

It's... ok vs. a caster. A highly optimized caster would just astral project spam with a bound nightmare from a demi-plane until you died, though. Even without using super-cheese builds, metamagic stacking on orbs would bring this guy down fast, or some no-save control spells. It's pretty even with a vanilla pit fiend, actually. Similar to hit, similar damage output, and similar AC. The advantage this guy has is tripping, which means that while they're burning the HPs away in full attacks, the barb has a solid chance of knocking the pitfiend down.

Tvtyrant
2010-11-22, 11:20 PM
It's... ok vs. a caster. A highly optimized caster would just astral project spam with a bound nightmare from a demi-plane until you died, though.

..... I hate wizards. Really I do. Its better against a Druid then most builds though.

faceroll
2010-11-22, 11:24 PM
..... I hate wizards. Really I do. Its better against a Druid then most builds though.

Haha, I feel you.

Eldariel
2010-11-22, 11:57 PM
As a wizard killing monster is does its job extremely well. It would tear up any real spell-caster like they were rice paper. However, they have the singular weakness that its best ability is AMF, which won't help much against a Pit Fiend. In fact, the Pit Fiend gets stronger relative to you when its in an AMF, since you don't get your buffs and it doesn't need them.

Also, you would be removing a lot of your groups ability to fight this way, since it is in an AMF and so immune to your casters. I would like the hear about how one runs though, since I could be completely wrong and it might be able to six a Pit Fiend in a few hits.

It actually beats a Pit Fiend and Balor quite handily 1v1 thanks to the AMF. That disables all their decent attacks and he has about 60 more HP than each with better AC and to hit more attacks, and damage (their DR is of the type that's disabled in AMFs). That's specifically why I didn't bother to include Shock Trooper/Leap Attack; it's an overkill most of the time.

The principal tactic against Balor/PF is to get next to one, trip it, and beat the everloving tar outta it. Provided you can get to them (their strongest tactic by far is kiting you with Greater Teleports and spells), they'll be dead. You can use a Greatsword in close range at the same stats as Guisarme, except 3d6 damage. You'll practically never lose the Trip-checks (it's something like +27 vs. +17; that's a tad unfair on an opposed check, especially since ties go in your favor) so you're looking at effective (since trip applies AC penalty) +38/+38/+38/+33/+28/+23 at 3d6+22 plus Power Attack vs. PF in melee range (Charge increases all that by +2).

Pit Fiend is a bit scarier of the two so let's take him as an example: after trip he either full attacks prone at -4 on all, or raises provoking and attacks once. Pit Fiend's AC prone is 36. If we Charge him, our attacks are at +36 base. Now, assuming they don't wiggle out of the AMF and start kiting with Teleports (they can do it since I neglected to include Thicket of Blades but you could cut the second Barbarian-level and Imperious Command for it), the PF is in a position where he has lower chance to hit (+26 primaries vs. our +34-+36 depending on if this is the first round where we charge or not) and lower AC than we do (36 vs. our 37), not to mention lower base damage on every attack (Its here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#pitFiend) vs. our 3d6+22 each) & same number of attacks.

There's also the small fact that we're immortal for 15 turns. And vs. its Poison DC 27, our Fort is +28 so we're relatively safe. In short, Pit Fiend or Balor is childs' play as long as we can get it to the AMF and deny it its magicks. Of course, doing that is hard. Very, very hard. We'd have to use magic items and pray for that part if they're played up to their Intelligence.


Bigger problem would be pre-epic Dragons and Tarrasque in melee. You'd eventually be able to drop Big T to 0 due to your immortality but it would munch you to 0 long before then so you'd die in 15 turns, while it still needs the Wish to be defeated; if you took 10th level of Runescarred, you could possibly have enough Heals to fix yourself up after dropping T to 0. You can use your other abilities to balance it out a bit; Freedom of Movement helps, for example.

That said, the fact that Big T is quite tough martially is quite apparent here; a melee character completely geared for it can take down Big T 1v1 without dying (but not Wish it dead unless you actually geared for that too), but others really need to kite it. Kiting here would actually work just fine but it'd be long and boring process. Still, your ranged attacks are good enough and if you use e.g. Javelins, you'll be dealing damage so it'll eventually go down.


Dragons...you'd have a chance against martially but their casting would wreck you. You can't trip 'em 'cause they're Gargantuan or larger (though your modifiers would be enough; just not your size), so you'd need to use Righteous Might denying you AMF. Which means their spellcasting will be the end of you. Though if you could somehow GET them in an AMF, you could beat them. Just, it's not happening if they're played with modicum of intelligence; their spellcasting would be the end of you.


And yeah, you'd eat POORLY PLAYED Wizards handily. But thing is, those bastards tend to be damn intelligent so that's rare. Wizard-like monsters though, like Balors and Pit Fiends, you're excellent against. The touch AC would protect you from Wizards' Orbs for one turn, probably, until they realize they need to burn a True Strike to hit you. After that, it'd be a world of pain though.

Overall, his biggest weakness is that you can't Widen the AMF rationally; you'd really want the full 20' coverage for it to work out nicely. But yeah, I feel something like that is what a Barbarian should be like; someone you really don't want to have next to you, and someone who really, really just doesn't die. Not when you'd want him to, anyways.

faceroll
2010-11-23, 12:07 AM
What's the barb's AC in an an AMF? 33? 35 with whirling frenzy?

Eldariel
2010-11-23, 12:10 AM
What's the barb's AC in an an AMF? 33? 35 with whirling frenzy?

The AC stats I gave are in AMF; 39 base, 41 with Whirling Frenzy, 37 in both Frenzies. Touch would be 34/36/32.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, Whirling Frenzy vs. Rage is a really close call. I pretty much handwaved Greater Rage from Runescarred becoming Greater Frenzy instead, but Greater Rage would actually be really solid; it's +4 AC (vs. +2 from Whirling), +6 Will & +3 Fort-saves (vs. +3 Reflex) and +60 HP vs. the extra attack doing all at -2.

You'd lose about 20 point of damage a turn vs. ~AC 40, but gain +2 AC, way better important saves and 60 HP. I genuinely can't choose.

faceroll
2010-11-23, 12:20 AM
I missed the 5 nat AC. Is that 2 from half minotaur, 3 from Runescarred? What book is runescarred from?

Eldariel
2010-11-23, 12:21 AM
I missed the 5 nat AC. Is that 2 from half minotaur, 3 from Runescarred? What book is runescarred from?

Yes, 2 HM and 3 Runescarred. And Runescarred Berserker is from Unapproachable East.

Deth Muncher
2010-11-23, 12:51 AM
Well thanks Eldariel. I may yoink this for my campaign for my BBEG's elite soldierness.