[PF] Rage Cycle = Metagaming?

[Gabe the Bard]

When I first read about the change to the mechanics for Raging in Pathfinder, I thought it was great for low level barbarians since they're able to spread their rage rounds outside of combat. You could rage to smash down a door or bust open a chest and still have rounds left over for a fight. But I feel conflicted about the idea of "rage cycling". On the one hand, it's certainly fine mechanically and it's not really that powerful other than allowing you to use certain rage powers more than once per encounter. But it just seems odd to me that my barbarian would just turn his anger on and off like a switch. I guess it might make sense if you're some sort of barbarian sage who channels your anger into a moment of martial prowess before calming down again. But if you're a berserker that is high on adrenaline and unresolved personal issues, it just seems weird to me that you would be a psychotic murder one minute and then calmly sipping tea in the next. Are all rage cycling barbarians supposed to be anger management specialists or schizophrenic?

[Irk]

If it bothers you, actually play a barbarian anger management specialist/schizophrenic. That way YOU aren't metamgaming. I don't actually much PF experience, but that was the first thing that came to mind.

[MukkTB]

You could think of it as taking a breather. Also have you ever been on an adrenaline high in a fight or something? The adrenaline doesn't stay at a perfectly consistent level. It kind of comes in surges.

[Psyren]

Any barbarian would know that he gets tired if he stops raging. Using magic to overcome that would be pretty natural to me - whether that is drinking a lesser restoration potion at the lowest levels, to having a party member craft him a Cord of Stubborn Resolve at mid-upper levels.

[grarrrg]

But it just seems odd to me that my barbarian would just turn his anger on and off like a switch. I guess it might make sense if you're some sort of barbarian sage who channels your anger into a moment of martial prowess before calming down again. But if you're a berserker that is high on adrenaline and unresolved personal issues, it just seems weird to me that you would be a psychotic murder one minute and then calmly sipping tea in the next. Are all rage cycling barbarians supposed to be anger management specialists or schizophrenic?

It sounds like your problem is more with the "can use Rage as single rounds" than it is with "Rage Cycling".
Being Fatigued will not prevent you from having a cup of tea after a good brawl.

It's common enough in real life for someone to have '1-round anger'. You get mad, punch a pillow or yell or something, then you're back to normal.

As for Rage-Cycling, that can be viewed a couple ways. From an out of game perspective, you're dropping in and out of Rage regularly in combat, so you can use your Rage Powers more often.
From an In-game perspective, you're never really dropping out of rage, because the 'time' you spend out of Rage is quite negligible.

I do agree that seeking out of a way to negate Fatigue can seem meta-gamey though, and may have to be Role Played as your character not liking the "tiredness" after a fight.

[Slipperychicken]

Maybe it's a forbidden secret technique to control his fury and channel it into combat prowess?

[Psyren]

I do agree that seeking out of a way to negate Fatigue can seem meta-gamey though, and may have to be Role Played as your character not liking the "tiredness" after a fight.

Better still, a barbarian tribe would be well-acquainted with the spirits/emotions of their ancestors. They don't need to be aware that they have "levels in the barbarian class" - they would simply know that in times of great personal danger/conflict, they are able to call upon a fury that lets them perform titanic feats, and that techniques such as these have kept their tribesmen safe for centuries.

Seeing rage that way, they would also see the fatigue as natural - after all, they are drawing upon a power that, to them, comes from a distant heritage as much as it comes from within. Their shamans/adepts would actively study ways to help the tribe's warriors control this fury more efficiently and re-enter that heightened state during a protacted battle.

At a minimum this would mean concoctions which are identical stat-wise to lesser restoration potions. A player who wants to rage-cycle but keep things fair could simply stock up on the potions and leave it at that - inserting a full-round action in between rages whereby the barbarian draws a potion, quaffs it, and re-enters rage, ready to reuse his 1/rage powers on the following round.

[PersonMan]

It's common enough in real life for someone to have '1-round anger'. You get mad, punch a pillow or yell or something, then you're back to normal.

Yep. Remember that a round is six seconds - count those out to get a feel for that time. Working up all your pent-up rage and then getting it out via foot-bashing-of-door can take 6ish seconds.


From an In-game perspective, you're never really dropping out of rage, because the 'time' you spend out of Rage is quite negligible.

And Rage =/= rage, so you're always in the angry flipping-out state, you just don't get the same angry-power-surge.

[Segev]

Rage Cycling comes with a serious price: you are fatigued. That doesn't go away just because you re-enter Rage. So you've weakened yourself by rage-cycling. Yes, solutions to the fatigue problem exist.

From an IC perspective, "I can draw more deeply on my anger to regain that opening surge of power I normally get only once, but it tires me out as if I had come down from the rage," seems reasonable.

It also seems that rage cycling was not INTENDED by the writers, or they probably would have had the rage powers not wear off.

[Psyren]

Rage Cycling comes with a serious price: you are fatigued. That doesn't go away just because you re-enter Rage. So you've weakened yourself by rage-cycling. Yes, solutions to the fatigue problem exist.

The whole point of rage-cycling is to deal with the fatigue; you can't re-enter rage at all while fatigued.

[Segev]

My bad. Sounds like it's just fine, then. You have to expend resources to cycle.

The IC side of it is straight-forward. You have a limit to your rage rounds per day. There is no mechanic restricting you from ending it. Clearly, coming down from rage is a choice anyway. It may not be that you're less angry, but you can only tap that fury effectively for so long. Stopping tapping it for a bit and allowing the fatigue to wash over you, then dealing with THAT to re-tap your fury...just shows that you're truly mastering your rage. Or that your rage is an almost sentient thing on its own that chooses how to drive you most effectively.

[Neknoh]

Busting something open can come down to frustration venting in an uncontrolled burst of anger. Rather typical "Suddenly superpowers" thing you see in TV when somebody recently aquired something, they're acting out and suddenly they slam their fist into a table and break it, followed by either "I didn't mean to do that." or a still upset mentality without the superpowerbreakage of stuff. Even Gandalf does it when he suddenly uses Intimidate on Bilbo without meaning to because the ring is near.

As for combat, it is easely justifiable in-game by claiming it to be the force he puts behind attacks, i.e. he is not constantly buffed by something spiritual, but then he punches and channels energy, if he does it again in the fight, it leaves him drained and exhausted.

"Take THAT!" ¤papoom¤
"Heh, that was a good one, bet you can't use more of those."
"NNNNGHAAAAAAA!" ¤paPOOM!¤

Think shounen manga "I can only use this technique once or it hurts me." kinda deal.

[Urpriest]

The whole reason people do rage-cycling is because some rage powers are once per rage. So in order to answer what rage-cycling means fluffwise, we first need to ask what once per rage powers mean fluffwise.

One possibility is that using a once per rage power expends your fury, building it up to a peak in a way that you can't recover from without resting. Being immune to fatigue then would mean that you can build up to that peak of fury repeatedly without ever needing to fully calm back down again.

I've got a really good metaphor for this, but unfortunately it's sexual so I shouldn't post it. You could probably guess at the details if you want to though.

[Psyren]

My bad. Sounds like it's just fine, then. You have to expend resources to cycle.

The IC side of it is straight-forward. You have a limit to your rage rounds per day. There is no mechanic restricting you from ending it. Clearly, coming down from rage is a choice anyway. It may not be that you're less angry, but you can only tap that fury effectively for so long. Stopping tapping it for a bit and allowing the fatigue to wash over you, then dealing with THAT to re-tap your fury...just shows that you're truly mastering your rage. Or that your rage is an almost sentient thing on its own that chooses how to drive you most effectively.

Yep. No problems with it fluff-wise or mechanically here either.

I would look at askance at a player that only wanted to dip Lame Oracle to deal with it rather than because of a backstory choice, but one that wanted to quaff potions or get a cord or use Heart of the Fields on a Human Barb would be fine.



Think shounen manga "I can only use this technique once or it hurts me." kinda deal.

Then proceeds to use it 5 more times :smallwink:



I've got a really good metaphor for this, but unfortunately it's sexual so I shouldn't post it. You could probably guess at the details if you want to though.

I suddenly want to homebrew "Mordenkainen's Priapism"....

[Segev]

I've got a really good metaphor for this, but unfortunately it's sexual so I shouldn't post it. You could probably guess at the details if you want to though.

I believe the Roleplaying parent forum had a 30-page discussion on how rules shouldn't differ for female and male characters...but I see no way in which this could be relevant to your quote. >_> <_<

[Person_Man]

The purpose of the game is to have fun. If making certain mechanical build decisions makes the game more fun for you without detracting from the fun of other players, do it. If being as consistent as possible with a particular character fluff or mind set or world view for how your mechanics manifest themselves in the game world is more enjoyable for you, do that. Other peoples opinions on how metagamey it is are unimportant.

Also, because PF Barbarian is still mired in Tier 4, and I hate the tedius "# of rounds" book keeping, and I hate fiddly penalties, and I hate it when players are forced to invest resources in workarounds (Playing a Warforged or taking 1 level of Oracle for the sole purpose of getting immunity to Fatigue), I allow Barbarians to Rage at-will in combat, it does not impose an AC penalty, they are not Fatigued afterwards, and I allow them to change Rage Powers outside of combat at-will (as long as they're not slowing the actual game down to do it), and I allow them to mix and match Archetype abilities (though they can't trade out the same ability more then once). But "once per Rage" powers means "once per encounter" because without the other restrictions on Rage I assume you'll be using them every encounter. These changes make the Barbarian much more playable from a mechanical standpoint.

[Gabe the Bard]

Wow, I'm impressed by all the philosophical interpretations of a barbarian's rage. I like the idea of being consistently angry but having spurts of fury that translate into bursts of physical strength, which is kind of how Rage works anyway. Person_Man, your alterations to Rage seem pretty interesting, but now I wonder if it was indeed the writers' intention to allow once per rage powers to be usable only once per encounter. If that was the case, they could have simply written once per encounter, like martial maneuvers in Tome of Battle, unless they were specifically trying to use different wording to set their mechanics apart. Because once rage cycling comes into play, those once per rage powers do end up working a lot like martial maneuvers and rage cycling itself seems comparable to the refresh mechanic.

[DarkSonic1337]

They didn't write once per encounter because for SOME REASON Piazo didn't catch on that once per encounter could be a thing (it's not used ANYWHERE in pathfinder. Looking forward to DSP's Path of War to change that :))

[Eldariel]

Rage Cycling isn't the problem, it's a symptom of a problem. The problem is how Rage-powers are constructed into 1/Rage thingies, which is an unbelievably stupid design decision. Rage Cycling is about the only way to get around that and make them useful.

It's the same problem as with PF feats: 99% of Paizo feats are just bad (which incidentally makes picking feats real easy even with all the sources). Paizo is slogging through every single design mistake and trap that WotC committed all over again. It's like a decade of experience was just wasted. Sure, they could update the system and make it "better" (insofar as 3.5 is better than 3.0) but their updates and improvements are suffering of the same issues the original was.

I'll give you, they certainly made most of the core classes better (Fighter is more fun, Monk is about a hundred times better than the original thanks to archetypes in particular, casters got some incidental class features to make the levels less bland, Pally changes are okay, Ranger got few nice things, etc.) and the races are more balanced (and interesting), their monster play options are plain better than the original (though also more work), and Archetypes move the PRC overload into a more logical place while still maintaining the good multiclassing and so on; they did a lot of good stuff.

[Scow2]

They didn't write once per encounter because for SOME REASON Piazo didn't catch on that once per encounter could be a thing (it's not used ANYWHERE in pathfinder. Looking forward to DSP's Path of War to change that :))

That's because "Encounters" are purely a metagame construct.

[olentu]

They didn't write once per encounter because for SOME REASON Piazo didn't catch on that once per encounter could be a thing (it's not used ANYWHERE in pathfinder. Looking forward to DSP's Path of War to change that :))

The thing I find quite humorous is that the 3.5 barbarian is a once per encounter class.

[Psyren]

Rage cycling is clearly intended. Paizo wants you to be able to do it - after all, that's the whole point behind giving Barbarians Tireless Rage, which is meant to be a game-changer ability. The only place that the devs and players likely disagree is when it should be accessible; 17 is far too late for most campaigns, but I'd wager that they want fatigue to be a meaningful limitation at least for a couple of levels into the Barbarian's career. Furthermore, had they wanted Barbarian fatigue to be special (i.e. unremovable) they could have done so with one tiny errata to the CRB.

1/rage is much more elegant than 1/encounter in this sense. If you spend the resources to rage more than once per fight - even something as simple as Lesser Restoration potions - you deserve the rewards. It's just that simple.

[Slipperychicken]

That's because "Encounters" are purely a metagame construct.

I still think that would be more useful than X/day. If you want "per encounter", I think Factotum got the balance right, needing 1 minute of rest to recharge its abilities instead of openly saying "once per encounter".

I also think the 1/rage powers really should have been at-will abilities.

[Psyren]

Aside from Scow's comment about "encounters" being a metagame construct - as I said in my post, 1/rage is superior to 1/encounter because it better rewards players for being able to rage more than once per fight. The point being that that is a worthy goal for a barbarian player to devote resources towards.

[grarrrg]

They didn't write once per encounter because for SOME REASON Piazo didn't catch on that once per encounter could be a thing (it's not used ANYWHERE in pathfinder. Looking forward to DSP's Path of War to change that :))

Inquisitor Judgement powers only work during an Encounter, and are specifically worded that you (almost) never have to use more than one Judgement use per Encounter.

That's pretty darn close to 1/encounter.


Rage cycling is clearly intended. Paizo wants you to be able to do it - after all, that's the whole point behind giving Barbarians Tireless Rage, which is meant to be a game-changer ability. The only place that the devs and players likely disagree is when it should be accessible; 17

^ This.

[Scow2]

Aside from Scow's comment about "encounters" being a metagame construct - as I said in my post, 1/rage is superior to 1/encounter because it better rewards players for being able to rage more than once per fight. The point being that that is a worthy goal for a barbarian player to devote resources towards.
To you, maybe. Others see it as an exploit that rewards munchkinry and rules abuse at the expense of intended balance. I don't think "Rage Cycling" was intended at all.

The breakup of Rage into discrete rounds was to empower barbarians to be more reckless with their rages - especially at low levels - instead of being "Too awesome to use", or wasted when a combat ends in one lucky round and leaves the barbarian with a half-dozen rounds left on his rage.

"Tireless Rage" is a holdover from 3.5, to prevent a barbarian from being Gimped if he runs out of rage mid-fight... NOT to rage-cycle abilities every single round.

That Paizo can't give mundanes nice things is a different issue entirely (Seriously... why did they make the "Unarmored barbarian" archetypes so terrible?! They could have replaced Armor proficiency with Con to AC and be done with it)

[Psyren]

"Tireless Rage" is a holdover from 3.5, to prevent a barbarian from being Gimped if he runs out of rage mid-fight... NOT to rage-cycle abilities every single round.

I disagree; the fact that it is given so late makes it seem like a game-changer to me. It smacks of "you're at or near the pinnacle of your class, let's remove a major limitation that everyone else in your class has had to deal with to show how far you've come." It's on par with the Ranger learning how to hide while being observed, or the Bard getting to take 10 on any skill check at any time, or Paladins becoming immune to compulsion so they don't have to worry about being made to fall etc.

[Scow2]

I disagree; the fact that it is given so late makes it seem like a game-changer to me. It smacks of "you're at or near the pinnacle of your class, let's remove a major limitation that everyone else in your class has had to deal with to show how far you've come." It's on par with the Ranger learning how to hide while being observed, or the Bard getting to take 10 on any skill check at any time, or Paladins becoming immune to compulsion so they don't have to worry about being made to fall etc.Paladins have (limited) immunity to compulsion starting at level 5. Rangers can hide in plain sight, but they've been hiding for a while. Bards rarely fail skill checks anyway. Now, the barbarian is able to conserve rounds of rage in a fight, and not worry about being gimped if he runs out of rage early, or wants to conserve his rage. B

[Psyren]

Paladins have (limited) immunity to compulsion starting at level 5.

Care to elaborate? All I'm seeing at Pal 5 is Divine Bond.


Rangers can hide in plain sight, but they've been hiding for a while.

Not while being observed, they weren't. And note that in PF, an observer can keep you from hiding (with respect to them) using any of their 5 senses now, not just sight. So this is indeed a huge game-changer.


Bards rarely fail skill checks anyway.

Taking 10 has significant implications. It means for instance that you can reliably UMD in combat, and therefore use all manner of items/take over as the party's primary caster. Game-changer.


Now, the barbarian is able to conserve rounds of rage in a fight, and not worry about being gimped if he runs out of rage early, or wants to conserve his rage. B

...and rage-cycle. Game-changer.