Need help making a Barbarian

[Nintendogeek01]

Disclaimer: Try not to assume too much of what I may or may not already know, I did NOT start out role-playing games with Dungeons & Dragons, I consider myself to be fairly D&D/Pathfinder illiterate for a role-player. I've done a fair amount of research on my own by now but try to keep abbreviations and other lingo to a minimum, I still get confused by certain terms and abbreviations.

So I'm strongly considering making a Barbarian for an Iron Gods game, of the "Numerian Liberator" archetype (either Changeling or human, depending on if the GM allows me to take the former). I kinda like the idea of a natural weapons or dual-wielding berserker, but it's my understanding from my research that either of these are rage power/feat intensive. Plus there's the recommended rage powers for the Numerian Liberator too.

So to get to my questions.
Is natural weapon or dual wielding viable for a barbarian?
What rage powers and feats would keep me playable while keeping in theme with the Numerian Liberator?
Other general tips for making a Numerian Liberator?

I'm not looking to min/max, I wouldn't mind being efficient but straight min/max'ing isn't for me, I'll be happy if I am an asset.

[exelsisxax]

Since you're new to the system and don't want to optimize, I recommend you instead play an unchained barbarian.

The floor for both skill and power is a bit higher, but they also have a lower optimization potential. You won't be capable of accidentally killing yourself with Rage, you won't have to recalculate half your bonuses every other combat round, but you also won't be able to take advantage of rage cycling cheeses. For what you describe, UCbarb has nothing but upsides.

For the build though, are you thinking to smash everything as quickly as possible or be tanky and just never die? Both TWF and natural weapons have little defensive support but are damn good at slaughtering. Power attack is a must either way, of course.

[Nintendogeek01]

Hm... hadn't really thought about it in terms of survivability or damage-dealing potential, I'd kinda thought of both. I honestly don't know, I mean I guess I want to be a damage-dealing machine, but a part of me feels like I'd be a poor meat (or gear as the case may be) grinder if I went down part-way through the fight.

[exelsisxax]

Well d12 HD is good enough that you are very unlikely to get downed by a simple lucky crit, so don't worry about that too much. The real problems are opponents with multiple melee attacks. Casters have many means of getting away from a couple of monsters before getting full-attacked, you won't - and you're going to be charging into those situations. If your party casters can't be relied upon for timely BFC, you'll need to be able to mitigate lots of potential damage.

Unless, of course, you can kill pretty much everything nearby whenever your turn comes around. It's a very valid strategy.

[Ualaa]

The base Barbarian receives a bonus to STR and CON when raging.
The unchained Barbarian instead receives a flat bonus to attack and damage.

The base Barbarian usually benefits from a big two-hander weapon, which allows them to get more damage from the same STR score (1.5x STR, for a 2-Hander).
The unchained Barbarian has a fixed hit and damage bonus, so that doesn't scale better with a bigger weapon.

I'd second going with the Unchained Barbarian.
Fixed bonuses are easier to add, then to add a bonus to hit and then a scaling bonus to damage based on the size of your weapon.

Generally speaking, rage will increase your damage at a cost of your defenses.
But the increased CON lets you take more punishment.
I'd take a look at the 'Invulnerable Rager', as that gets a scaling bonus to damage reduction; a 1/- per two levels in the class.
Not sure if your desired archetype is compatible or not -- your archetype essentially modifies your class by surrendering certain class features and replacing them with others.
You can take any number of archetypes, provided the features surrendered or altered are not shared (required to be present) in both of them.
If your first archetype alters or removes a given class feature, then that feature is no longer present to be altered by another archetype.

Unchained is simpler, than the base Barbarian.
Invulnerable Rager goes with the premise of soaking damage.
Not sure if that is what you're going for.



As far as Rage Powers go...
Reckless Stance will increase your attack rating, at a cost to your armor class.
Powerful Stance will increase your damage bonus.
If you're hitting anyway, Powerful adds more but if you need assistance in hitting Reckless is better.

Brawler gets you Improved Unarmed Strike, which allows for unarmed melee attacks.
If you can get natural attacks, that's likely a better route than unarmed strikes unless you have a means to increase the damage on said strikes.
A monk will gradually add extra attacks, and gain a higher damage die over time.
A rogue adds more damage through sneak attacks.
If you find a means to add additional damage to unarmed strikes, Brawler (the Rage Power) is an easy way into that.

Natural attacks generally are either Primary (based off of full attack bonus, which given you are a full Base Attack Bonus class, and have a high Strength score and class feature (Rage) to increase your bonus further... will be good) or Secondary, which are generally at -5 from a Primary natural attack.
Unlike iterative attacks (which you get more of, as your BAB increases, a second attack at +6, a third attack at +11, and a fourth attack at +16... that is base, not adjusted attack bonus), you get one attack per Natural Attack immediately but the number of Natural Attacks generally does not increase as you level up... although the chance to connect with them does.

[Nintendogeek01]

But I really do want the Numerian Liberator. It fits with the theme I'd like to go for with this adventure. I'm okay with giving up on TWF or natural weapon barbarian if I have to but I really want Numerian Liberator, I just don't want to suck at that archetype.

[exelsisxax]

But I really do want the Numerian Liberator. It fits with the theme I'd like to go for with this adventure. I'm okay with giving up on TWF or natural weapon barbarian if I have to but I really want Numerian Liberator, I just don't want to suck at that archetype.

Why do you want that archetype? Unless you're fighting spellcasting constructs all the time, it's terrible. Is that the campaign? If not, dump the archetype, steal the fluff, and be better off for it.

[Nintendogeek01]

As far as I can tell constructs aren't that uncommon in Iron Gods. Granted I've never played in it before but that was the impression I was getting.

[exelsisxax]

As far as I can tell constructs aren't that uncommon in Iron Gods. Granted I've never played in it before but that was the impression I was getting.

If the campaign is well above half constructs, you'll only be slightly weaker. If you aren't fighting golems and robo-wizards every day, you gave up some extremely important features for a barbs to stay useful. You get almost nothing for giving up immunity to flat-footed and flanking - that's not a good trade.

You can't decide on rage powers or anything like that without deciding on UC or normal barb. The rages work completely differently, and all rage powers are incompatible between them. If your DM lets you take archetypes for UCbarb (not RAW legal), you can't use any rage powers they list.

[Nintendogeek01]

Alrighty... this is obviously getting nowhere right now... so for the sake of getting at least some amount of progress, how about a regular Barbarian then? What would be some good rage powers and feats that would make a regular barbarian something like a Numerian Liberator?

[Extra Anchovies]

When OP asks for help building a Numerian Liberator, "don't play Numerian Liberator" is not a helpful response, especially when OP reiterates that they're set on Numerian Liberator. The archetype is generally a downgrade from stock Barbarian, yes, but "Numerian Liberator" is one of the parameters that OP set. The "best" choice is almost always wizard, cleric, druid, arcanist, or summoner, but those are outside OP's parameters (not Barbarian) so insisting that they're the only worthwhile options would be pointless.

With that out of the way, Numerian Liberator doesn't change much about how the Barbarian plays. If you want to build around its features you could go for a mage-killer sort, perhaps because you've seen firsthand the damage a spellcaster's creations can do. The Disruptive and Spellbreaker rage powers are both pretty obvious picks, since you can't normally take them as feats. Internal Fortitude and Fearless Rage give you immunity to some conditions which spells commonly inflict. No Escape is a good way to foil an escape for at least one round, which may be long enough to bring the cowardly mage down for good. Savage Intuition lets you enter a rage at the start of the first combat round, which helps cover the gap left by the loss of Uncanny Dodge. Witch Hunter gives you a decent damage boost against creatures with spellcasting or spell-like abilities, which covers a lot of the really dangerous baddies (outsiders, dragons, intelligent undead, etc). Spell Sunder could be useful, but I'm not sure how the math works out for that so I can't say for sure whether it's worthwhile. Superstition is, of course, a very nice pick, but if you have a support-caster ally you may end up having to delay your turn a bit to let them lay down a buff spell before you start raging. Unexpected Strike could let you cancel a withdraw attempt if you land a trip attempt or use the Stand Still feat, but it's 1/rage so it's lower-priority. Eater of Magic is rather good, because save rerolls are always nice.

Step Up, Following Step, and Step Up And Strike are good feat choices for an anti-caster, because they make escaping from melee pretty dang tough. Combat Reflexes gives you more AoOs. Dirty Fighting and Improved (Maneuver) could be a nice pick; Trip can force enemies to stay in your melee range, but Dirty Trick (possibly with Greater and/or Quick DT) can apply shaken (locks out psychic spellcasting), deafened (failure chance with verbal-component spells), or blinded (can't use targeted spells on creatures outside of touch range), so it may be a better choice for a mage-killer. Dirty Trick would be a lot more feat-intensive, though, so you wouldn't be able to finish both the Quick Dirty Trick chain and the Step Up And Strike chain until the mid-levels.

Here's a quick feat and rage power progression which might give you some ideas. Italics are rage powers.

1 Combat Reflexes, Step Up
2 Superstition
3 Following Step
4 Witch Hunter
5 Power Attack
6 No Escape
7 Step Up and Strike
8 Disruptive
9 Stand Still
10 Eater of Magic
11 Extra Rage Power (Internal Fortitude)
12 Spellbreaker
13 Teleport Tactician
14 Fearless Rage

That gets you through 14th level, after which I think it's pretty much an open field for whatever feats and rage powers you want. Quick Reflexes might be useful if you can't get ahold of a Dex-boosting item.

[Nintendogeek01]

When OP asks for help building a Numerian Liberator, "don't play Numerian Liberator" is not a helpful response, especially when OP reiterates that they're set on Numerian Liberator. The archetype is generally a downgrade from stock Barbarian, yes, but "Numerian Liberator" is one of the parameters that OP set. The "best" choice is almost always wizard, cleric, druid, arcanist, or summoner, but those are outside OP's parameters (not Barbarian) so insisting that they're the only worthwhile options would be pointless.

With that out of the way, Numerian Liberator doesn't change much about how the Barbarian plays. If you want to build around its features you could go for a mage-killer sort, perhaps because you've seen firsthand the damage a spellcaster's creations can do. The Disruptive and Spellbreaker rage powers are both pretty obvious picks, since you can't normally take them as feats. Internal Fortitude and Fearless Rage give you immunity to some conditions which spells commonly inflict. No Escape is a good way to foil an escape for at least one round, which may be long enough to bring the cowardly mage down for good. Savage Intuition lets you enter a rage at the start of the first combat round, which helps cover the gap left by the loss of Uncanny Dodge. Witch Hunter gives you a decent damage boost against creatures with spellcasting or spell-like abilities, which covers a lot of the really dangerous baddies (outsiders, dragons, intelligent undead, etc). Spell Sunder could be useful, but I'm not sure how the math works out for that so I can't say for sure whether it's worthwhile. Superstition is, of course, a very nice pick, but if you have a support-caster ally you may end up having to delay your turn a bit to let them lay down a buff spell before you start raging. Unexpected Strike could let you cancel a withdraw attempt if you land a trip attempt or use the Stand Still feat, but it's 1/rage so it's lower-priority. Eater of Magic is rather good, because save rerolls are always nice.

Step Up, Following Step, and Step Up And Strike are good feat choices for an anti-caster, because they make escaping from melee pretty dang tough. Combat Reflexes gives you more AoOs. Dirty Fighting and Improved (Maneuver) could be a nice pick; Trip can force enemies to stay in your melee range, but Dirty Trick (possibly with Greater and/or Quick DT) can apply shaken (locks out psychic spellcasting), deafened (failure chance with verbal-component spells), or blinded (can't use targeted spells on creatures outside of touch range), so it may be a better choice for a mage-killer. Dirty Trick would be a lot more feat-intensive, though, so you wouldn't be able to finish both the Quick Dirty Trick chain and the Step Up And Strike chain until the mid-levels.

Here's a quick feat and rage power progression which might give you some ideas. Italics are rage powers.

1 Combat Reflexes, Step Up
2 Superstition
3 Following Step
4 Witch Hunter
5 Power Attack
6 No Escape
7 Step Up and Strike
8 Disruptive
9 Stand Still
10 Eater of Magic
11 Extra Rage Power (Internal Fortitude)
12 Spellbreaker
13 Teleport Tactician
14 Fearless Rage

That gets you through 14th level, after which I think it's pretty much an open field for whatever feats and rage powers you want. Quick Reflexes might be useful if you can't get ahold of a Dex-boosting item.
Thank you for this. While I'm not 100% settled on whether I want to be a mage-killer, it would fit very well with the idea that my character might hate the Technic League. I'll still be looking into other options but I appreciate this for giving me a good springboard, and as a way to help narrow down good feats and rage powers.

So again, thank you! :smallwink:

(And if anyone else has other suggestions I am still in the market for them, please and thank you).

EDIT: Okay, so what if I start out with a natural weapon, but as the game progressed eventually picked up a two-handed weapon? It's my understanding that two-handed weapons really don't require a massive feat investment yes? (and before anyone asks "Why don't you just start with two-handed weapons?" it's characterization.)

[Topaz]

(I'm in the process of running Iron Gods, but I'll try not to be spoilery.) If your character is supposed to be a Numerian Barbarian and has a background that includes knowing anything about Robots, they should know that Hardness is one of the most common robotic characteristics. Builds that count on wearing down targets with a lot of smaller hits are going to be noticeably less effective against those opponents.

[Nintendogeek01]

Hm... fair point. Welp, like I may have indicated earlier while I would've liked natural weapons (or TWF) I wasn't super attached to them. Two-handed weapons it is!

[skypse]

Also, if you want to focus on beating up constructs instead of being a mage-killer, you should pick up the Gearbreaker Rage Power and the Vital Strike feat-chain. It's especially useful on situations where you have to overcome a high DR/hardness effect as it multiplies the number of damage dice rolled. A great sword gives you a 2d4, with enlarged you get 2d6 (if i remember correctly) and with vital strike this gets to 4d6, increasing the number of dice based on how far you have progressed on the feat chain. Upside is you get 1 hit that is a nuclear bomb, downside is you can only attack once since this feat applies only to a standard attack action.

[CasualViking]

Unchained Barbarian is compatible with Numerian Liberator. It's easier to play than regular Barbarian, and it's better for TWF. You're going to lose some damage to hardness, but you'll do fine even with TWF. Personally, I like double weapons like the Orc Double Axe, so you can do TWF, but can also hit like a two-handed weapon on single attacks and attacks of opportunity.

[Nintendogeek01]

Also, if you want to focus on beating up constructs instead of being a mage-killer, you should pick up the Gearbreaker Rage Power and the Vital Strike feat-chain. It's especially useful on situations where you have to overcome a high DR/hardness effect as it multiplies the number of damage dice rolled. A great sword gives you a 2d4, with enlarged you get 2d6 (if i remember correctly) and with vital strike this gets to 4d6, increasing the number of dice based on how far you have progressed on the feat chain. Upside is you get 1 hit that is a nuclear bomb, downside is you can only attack once since this feat applies only to a standard attack action.
Gearbreaker I'd looked at and am probably going to shoot for, but Vital Strike was a new one on me, so I looked it up and yeah that's pretty nasty, I'll have to see where I can work that in. Thank you!

[Fouredged Sword]

Vital strike is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand it doubles your weapon damage roll. On the other hand it does nothing for your strength bonus or any other bonus damage and you. You also lose out on your secondary attacks. On the third hand you can do it after moving unlike a full attack.

You want the biggest two handed weapon you can get your hands on. That means Greatsword or such. You want to then get as large as posible. Being bigger increases the damage of your weapon.

So the question is "Is 2-3d6 extra damage on single attacks but not full attacks worth a feat?" A lot of time the answer will be yes. You get more damage while staying mobile.

Do note Vital strike doesn't work with charges. You move and attack or attack and move.

[skypse]

Every weapon has a size category. This designation indicates the size of the creature for which the weapon was designed.

A weapon's size category isn't the same as its size as an object. Instead, a weapon's size category is keyed to the size of the intended wielder. In general, a light weapon is an object two size categories smaller than the wielder, a one-handed weapon is an object one size category smaller than the wielder, and a two-handed weapon is an object of the same size category as the wielder.

Inappropriately Sized Weapons: A creature can't make optimum use of a weapon that isn't properly sized for it. A cumulative –2 penalty applies on attack rolls for each size category of difference between the size of its intended wielder and the size of its actual wielder. If the creature isn't proficient with the weapon, a –4 nonproficiency penalty also applies.

The measure of how much effort it takes to use a weapon (whether the weapon is designated as a light, one-handed, or two-handed weapon for a particular wielder) is altered by one step for each size category of difference between the wielder's size and the size of the creature for which the weapon was designed. For example, a Small creature would wield a Medium one-handed weapon as a two-handed weapon. If a weapon's designation would be changed to something other than light, one-handed, or two-handed by this alteration, the creature can't wield the weapon at all.


Medium Weapon Damage Tiny Weapon Damage Large Weapon Damage
1d2 — 1d3
1d3 1 1d4
1d4 1d2 1d6
1d6 1d3 1d8
1d8 1d4 2d6
1d10 1d6 2d8

You can make use of this rule as well. Use a large 1 handed sword with which you are proficient. Grab exotic weapon proficiency for Bastard Sword so you can wield it as 1-handed, then bo and buy a Large Bastard Sword and wield it with 2 hands. You get a -2 penalty on all your attack rolls, but your damage dice jumps to 2d8 compared to the 2d4 Greatsword. Declare your move action, activate Power Attack, declare an attack with Vital Strike and go break a mountain in half. You average damage goes from 5 (greatsword) to 9 (Large Bastard Sword) without any bonuses and feats for just a -2 on attack rolls.