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unipsi
2017-11-27, 02:13 PM
So, I saw a barbarian build posted a few years ago, but I made some fundamental changes and optimized it to make him nearly unkillable (save death effects). This is a CON based barbarian, so max your CON!

<Caution - If charmed / dominated, you will most likely kill your whole party>

Step 1: Race
Race: Half-Orc = +2 Con, speed 30, speak common and orc, Orc blood
Favored Class: Barbarian - At each level of Barbarian, gain 1 additional round of rage

Alternate Racial Traits
Dragon Sight - Darkvision 120ft
Warded Skin (from the Jungle) - Half-orcs from jungles are often protected by elaborate tattoos that redirect demonic magic. Jungle half-orcs with this racial trait gain spell resistance against divine magic equal to 6 + their level. Additionally, divine spells cast on them by demon worshipers have a 10% chance of failure.
Shadow hunter - Characters with this trait deal 50% weapon damage to incorporeal creatures when using non-magical weapons (including natural and unarmed attacks), as if using magic weapons. They also gain a +2 bonus on saving throws to remove negative levels, and recover physical ability damage from attacks by undead creatures at a rate of 2 points per ability score per day (rather than the normal 1 point per ability score per day).

Traits
Cautious Warrior - +1 dodge bonus to AC while you fight defensively or total defense.
Tusked - Primary bite attack for 1d4 damage. (Secondary at -5 penalty & ½ Str dmg)

Step 2: Class

Archetypes:
Barbarian (Urban Barbarian) and (Invulnerable Rager)
Fighter (Unbreakable)
Hunter (Verminous Hunter)

Level Class Special
1 Barb Crowd Control, Controlled Rage
2 Ftr Endurance, Diehard
3 Barb Invulnerability, Superstition
4 Htr Worm Animal Companion, Vermin empathy, Worm Focus, spells
5 Barb Extreme Endurance
6 Barb Guarded Life
7 Barb
8 Barb Celestial Totem, Lesser
9 Barb
10 Barb Fueled by vengeance
11 Barb
12 Barb Greater Guarded Life
13 Barb Greater Rage
14 Barb Come and Get me
15 Barb
16 Barb Fearless Rage, Indomitable Will
17 Barb
18 Barb Increase Damage Reduction
19 Barb Tireless Rage
20 Barb Increase Damage Reduction

Hunter - DO NOT GAIN A PET - Instead, use the Stalker's focus (worm) to grant yourself permanent fast-healing.
Spells:
0 - Alleviate (Rage for 1 round, gain sickened condition with ioun stone, cure it, immune all day)
0 - Blowing Dust
0 - Summon Nature's Minor Ally - Lasts 1 minute instead of 1 round due to not summoning hunter pet
0 - Detect Magic - Because why not
1 - Guardian 1 - Summon horse, Camel or Giant Manta Ray for mounts for 2 hours
1 - Keep Watch - Never be caught sleeping. If you enter combat and get fatigued, the ioun stone will move it to sickened and you can use alleviate to become immune


Step 3: Feats
Feats:
Note: Drawbacks used are major drawbacks and grant an extra bonus feat. Feats gained by class features are listed in step 2
Drawback: Animal Animosity
Drawback: Nearsighted
Bonus Feat: Raging Vitality
Bonus Feat: Bolstered Resilience
1. Combat expertise
3. Stalker’s Focus (Choose worm focus and now it levels with your character level instead of hunter level)
5. Fast Healer (heal half con mod each time you are healed, including fast healing and fire god's blessing)
7. Fire God's Blessing (Deal fire damage to heal 1 point + 1/2 con mod (+ barbarian level at 8th level+ while raging))
9. Stalwart
11. Power Attack
13. Improved Stalwart
15. Combat Reflexes
17. Bodyguard
19. In Harm's Way

Feat Details (only listing important ones, lookup the others)
Animal Animosity (Drawback) - You suffer a -2 penalty on all Handle Animal and Ride skill checks, and cannot take 10 with these skills. Additionally animals and magical beasts select you as a target in preference of other targets (as long as doing so does not put the attackers in some obvious additional risk), and such creatures gain a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls made against you.
Nearsighted (Drawback) - All ranged attacks you make suffer a -2 penalty, and the range increment for all ranged attacks and ranged, sight-based Perception checks are halved.
Fast Healer - When you regain hit points by resting or through magical healing, you recover additional hit points equal to half your Constitution modifier (minimum +1).
Fire God’s Blessing - When in combat, if you deal fire damage to an enemy, you heal 1 hit point. You can only benefit from this healing once per round. Attacks that cause a target to catch on fire heal you each round the target takes fire damage.
Raging Vitality - Whenever you are raging, the morale bonus to your Constitution increases by +2. Your rage does not end if you become unconscious. While unconscious you must still expend rounds of rage per day each round.
Bolstered Resilience - As an immediate action, you can double your DR against a single attack, to a maximum of DR 20. The type of the DR remains unchanged. If the attack you are guarding against is not successful, the increased damage reduction persists until you are hit with an attack or until the start of your next turn, whichever happens first. At the start of your next turn, you become fatigued. You cannot use this feat while you are fatigued.
Stalker’s Focus - Choose a single type of animal to emulate from the hunter’s animal focus class feature. Once per day, you or your animal companion (if you have one) can gain the benefit of that animal focus for 1 minute. Treat your character level as your hunter level for the purpose of determining the benefits granted by your chosen animal focus. Special: If you gain levels in a class that has the animal focus class feature, when you gain that feature you gain 1 additional minute of use each day of your animal focus class feature.
Combat Expertise - You can choose to take a –1 penalty on melee attack rolls and combat maneuver checks to gain a +1 dodge bonus to your Armor Class. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, the penalty increases by –1 and the dodge bonus increases by +1. You can only choose to use this feat when you declare that you are making an attack or a full-attack action with a melee weapon. The effects of this feat last until your next turn.
Stalwart - While using the total defense action, fighting defensively action, or Combat Expertise, you can forgo the dodge bonus to AC you would normally gain to instead gain an equivalent amount of DR, to a maximum of DR 5/—, until the start of your next turn. This damage reduction stacks with DR you gain from class features, such as the barbarian’s, but not with DR from any other source. If you are denied your Dexterity bonus to AC, you are also denied this DR.

Step 4: Magic Items

Weapon: +1 Falchion (Keen and Vicious) made from the special material Linite.
The Linite material will deal 1 point of fire damage with each hit and each round will deal 1 fire damage to you. Extreme endurance gives you resist 1 fire, so you should be fine. The 1 fire damage is for the Fire God's Blessing feat

Armor: Rhino Hide armor - +2d6 damage on a charge. (Honestly, you can choose something else, but Adamantine does not stack with this build)

Other: Scarlet and Green Cabochon (Ioun Stone) Flawed: This stone grants the wearer the Endurance feat. Anything that would make the wearer fatigued instead makes him sickened. Anything that would make the wearer exhausted instead makes him nauseated. Price: 8,000 gp.

Step 5: Skills
Acrobatics 3 ranks to give you +1 dodge when you fight defensive

Step 6: Rage Powers
Superstition - (To help resist spells)
Guarded Life - Convert damage to non-lethal when you go below 0.
Celestial Totem, Lesser - This is for use with Fire God's Blessing, increasing by character level the damage you heal (does not work with fast healing)
Fueled by vengeance - (extra rage rounds when you hit someone who hit you, max of 1 per round)
Greater Guarded Life - More survivability when taken below 0.
Come and Get me - You are going to get hit anyway, might as well hit those that hit you with an AOO, oh and get more rage rounds for your trouble
Fearless Rage - immune to fear
Increase Damage Reduction (To help mitigate the massive damage you are taking at this level)

Bringing it all together!

Rage for 1 round each day then use alleviate to get rid of sickened condition and make you immune to sickened from range for 24h

Worm Focus will give you fast healing 2 @ level 9 with 50% fortification + 1/2 Con mod (let's assume 5) = Fast healing 7
When you deal fire damage in a round you heal ( 1 + 1/2 con mod (5) + level while raging (Lesser celestial Aspect)) = 15 @ level 9
Each round, that is potential self healing of 22 at level 9

Damage reduction: (Calculated as if level 9)
DR 3 (1/2 Barbarian level)
Fight defensive and gain -4 attack, but +4 AC. Expertise you can take -3, but only take -1 to gain +1 AC (DR is maxed at 5 for now). Convert the dodge AC to DR for a total of 8 DR (16 vs non-lethal).
Use Bolstered resilience to double your DR vs the first attack that hits you in a round as an immediate action, for DR 16 (32 vs non lethal)

Party healing - Well, unfortunately you have to resist all spells while raging, but if you really need a heal, just drop out of rage, take the heal, then go back into rage. Your fatigue goes to sickened if you have the ioun stone, and if you cast alleviate, you are immune.


So, what do you think? Do you see anything I missed or rules I misinterpreted?

Vhaidara
2017-11-27, 02:31 PM
Some things worth considering
Alleviate is a third party spell, as are major drawbacks.

The fast healing isn't really adding much, at the levels you're looking at it's not very much healing. Less than a Cure Light Wounds each round (Fast Healing matters at the first point, for infinite out of combat healing, available via a 5k gold item, and at absurd values where you can negate entire attacks).

You aren't taking Combat Reflexes, so Come and Get Me is a horrible choice, since you can only take 1 AoO per round. And in exchange you give everyone +4 to hit and damage against you.

Additionally, you appear to hit like a wet noodle. Your offensive potential is basically nothing. Which means that the enemies will ignore you until the rest of the party is dead, then kill you at their leisure.

exelsisxax
2017-11-27, 02:42 PM
Being somewhat difficult to kill isn't a big advantage if you can't actually do anything. This is a totally nonthreatening character.

I also don't know how you got to the conclusion that you can use combat expertise to give you DR.

Your half-orc SR will apply to (divine) spells, including from your allies, even while not raging.

For sneaking 3pp in there, i'd have expected something more substantial.

Castilonium
2017-11-27, 02:59 PM
You can't use Stalker's Focus to get worm focus. It's from an archetype. And the ability from that archetype is called Vermin Focus, not Animal Focus.

exelsisxax, the Stalwart (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/stalwart/) and Improved (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/improved-stalwart/) feats let him use combat expertise to get DR.

unipsi, if you want a character that's actually good at being invulnerable and still a threat, try a tiefling paladin with Fey Foundling (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/fey-foundling) and VMC Cavalier, Order of the Star.

unipsi
2017-11-27, 03:07 PM
@ Keledrath
Yes, there are a few 3rd party things here, but all of the gaming groups in my area allow them. Good point in mentioning that they may not be available though.

Combat reflexes is at 15th level

If a wet noodle is 2d4 + 2d6 (viscous) +2d6 charge + 1 fire + 1.5 str mod + weapon enhancement with a 15-20 crit range...then yes, wet noodle. Though, this wasn't built for dealing damage, it was built taking it

Fast healing is the constant healing that costs you little. The 75% fortification at higher levels is the real champion of that ability and it doesn't hurt to have free healing.

-----------

@ exelsisxax -

Stalwart - While using the total defense action, fighting defensively action, or Combat Expertise, you can forgo the dodge bonus to AC you would normally gain to instead gain an equivalent amount of DR, to a maximum of DR 5/—, until the start of your next turn. This damage reduction stacks with DR you gain from class features, such as the barbarian’s, but not with DR from any other source. If you are denied your Dexterity bonus to AC, you are also denied this DR.

Improved stalwart increases the max to 10 instead of 5

The SR for divine spells is something I put in there specifically for the campaign I am in now, Way of the Wicked, where we face a lot of divine spells. With your self healing, you don't need healing spells anyway. Depending on how the DM rules, you might be able to allow spells to go through your SR.

Yes, I forgot to mention some things are 3rd party. If you are looking for something more substantial, I would say I either did a poor job of explaining or you overlooked things like the stalwart feat (which I explained how it was used in the original post). Again, though, this isn't a "i'm going to kill everything" build, this is "I'm going to tank everything" build.

unipsi
2017-11-27, 03:13 PM
@ Castilonium

I think you are using a very strict interpretation of the rules. I wouldn't expect a feat to list every possible combination of archetypes for pre-req. Anything that "alters" the ability but more or less stays the same should work just fine.
"This ability alters animal companion. " - Animal focus, Vermin focus...both are from the hunter, so I would argue that it is allowable.

I'll check out the Few Foundling, thanks

emeraldstreak
2017-11-27, 03:24 PM
Additionally, you appear to hit like a wet noodle. Your offensive potential is basically nothing. Which means that the enemies will ignore you until the rest of the party is dead, then kill you at their leisure.

This.

Plus, I cant speak of PF top tanking, but 3.5 has it better on lvl 1 characters.

exelsisxax
2017-11-27, 03:38 PM
@ Castilonium

I think you are using a very strict interpretation of the rules. I wouldn't expect a feat to list every possible combination of archetypes for pre-req. Anything that "alters" the ability but more or less stays the same should work just fine.
"This ability alters animal companion. " - Animal focus, Vermin focus...both are from the hunter, so I would argue that it is allowable.

I'll check out the Few Foundling, thanks

You're wrong either way. If vermin focus counts as an animal focus, you don't qualify for the feat - it requires you not to have the animal focus feature.

unipsi
2017-11-27, 03:46 PM
Exelsisxax - When you take the feat, you don't have it. You don't have to have the feature to make it count as something. There are plenty of feats that count as if you had another feat for purposes of something else. It doesn't stop doing that just because you haven't taken the feat. The same applies here. If you are choosing an animal focus and vermin focus is essentially the same, then you should be able to take it.

Either way, I'm not going to continue to argue that point with you. Our interpretations are different, and that is fine. Let's move on.

unipsi
2017-11-27, 03:53 PM
emeraldstreak - There is something better than DR 30 (60 vs non-lethal) vs every attack, DR 40 vs first attack, fast healing 10 per round plus healing another 28 if you hit something in the round, and having 75% fortification at first level in 3.5? Wow, I've been doing it wrong.

emeraldstreak
2017-11-27, 05:57 PM
emeraldstreak - There is something better than DR 30 (60 vs non-lethal) vs every attack, DR 40 vs first attack, fast healing 10 per round plus healing another 28 if you hit something in the round, and having 75% fortification at first level in 3.5? Wow, I've been doing it wrong.

That's...peanuts (in 3.5). However, you do play a different system so you have to compare to its very best. By the way, I vaguely remember the third party major drawbacks being limited to 1?

grarrrg
2017-11-27, 07:47 PM
5. Fast Healer (heal half con mod each time you are healed, including fast healing and fire god's blessing)
Fast Healer + Fast Healing is a no go.
Fast Healer works off of "resting or through magical healing".
Fast Healing is an EX>Extraordinary ability, it is not magic, and it most certainly is not rest.


Fire God’s Blessing - When in combat, if you deal fire damage to an enemy, you heal 1 hit point. You can only benefit from this healing once per round. Attacks that cause a target to catch on fire heal you each round the target takes fire damage.
...
Celestial Totem, Lesser - This is for use with Fire God's Blessing, increasing by character level the damage you heal (does not work with fast healing)
Similar issues with to Fast Healer/ing.
Celestial Totem "non-spell healing effects (such as channeled energy or lay on hands), she heals a number of additional points equal to the class level of the character performing the magical healing".
It can be non-Spell healing, but it must still be Magical healing (Fast Healing/Regeneration are not 'exceptions', it is just reminding you that they don't work to begin with).
The healing from Fire God's Blessing is at best questionable if it is actually 'magical' or not.



I think you are using a very strict interpretation of the rules. I wouldn't expect a feat to list every possible combination of archetypes for pre-req. Anything that "alters" the ability but more or less stays the same should work just fine.
"This ability alters animal companion. " - Animal focus, Vermin focus...both are from the hunter, so I would argue that it is allowable. You're wrong either way. If vermin focus counts as an animal focus, you don't qualify for the feat - it requires you not to have the animal focus feature.
This FAQ (http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qto) would suggest that Vermin Focus is essentially the same as Animal Focus.
The Stalker's Focus feat reads (in part) "Special: If you gain levels in a class that has the animal focus class feature..." which essentially overrides the 'disqualified from taking' part.
As long as the Feat is taken FIRST and THEN the level of Hunter, I can see this working.

exelsisxax
2017-11-27, 11:58 PM
Exelsisxax - When you take the feat, you don't have it. You don't have to have the feature to make it count as something. There are plenty of feats that count as if you had another feat for purposes of something else. It doesn't stop doing that just because you haven't taken the feat. The same applies here. If you are choosing an animal focus and vermin focus is essentially the same, then you should be able to take it.

Either way, I'm not going to continue to argue that point with you. Our interpretations are different, and that is fine. Let's move on.

Your interpretation is explicitly wrong.


Prerequisite(s): Knowledge (nature) 3 ranks, Survival 3 ranks, no levels in a class that has the animal focus class feature.

Benefit: Choose a single type of animal to emulate from the hunter's animal focus class feature. Once per day, you or your animal companion (if you have one) can gain the benefit of that animal focus for 1 minute. Treat your character level as your hunter level for the purpose of determining the benefits granted by your chosen animal focus.

Special: If you gain levels in a class that has the animal focus class feature, when you gain that feature you gain 1 additional minute of use each day of your animal focus class feature.

If vermin focus counts as animal focus:
you cannot take this feat after you have a level of hunter, because the feat requires you to NOT have animal focus. If you take the feat before hunter levels, it turns into extra uses of animal/vermin focus that scale off of HUNTER level.

If vermin focus does not count as animal focus:
you can take this feat whenever, but you can't get worm focus from it by any means because that's vermin focus and NOT animal focus(even if we pretend you can snipe archetype features).

Take your pick, you can't do this either way.

icefractal
2017-11-28, 02:53 AM
That's...peanuts (in 3.5). However, you do play a different system so you have to compare to its very best. By the way, I vaguely remember the third party major drawbacks being limited to 1?Um, no, not at first level it isn't. Outside of Pun-Pun and other TO stuff, it's not so easy to get numbers like that that you can just handwave it.

casb1965
2017-11-28, 03:14 AM
Unless I've missed something your spell resistance appears to be solely Divine spells how would you stop Arcane magic?

grarrrg
2017-11-28, 03:23 AM
Unless I've missed something your spell resistance appears to be solely Divine spells how would you stop Arcane magic?

Superstition (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/rage-powers/paizo-rage-powers/superstition-ex/) Rage Power 2 +1/4per level Morale all Saves when Raging, but you can NOT be a willing target of anything.
To be honest, Spell Resist 6+level isn't all that huge to begin with, but since you MUST Save against everything anyway, might as well take the extra bonus vs. Divine.

upho
2017-11-30, 12:12 AM
Do you see anything I missed or rules I misinterpreted?Aside from what other posters have already mentioned, the Invulnerable Rager's invulnerability class feature which grants DR doesn't stack with the increased damage reduction rage power, as per this FAQ (http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fn#v5748eaic9uqg).

More importantly though, I'm failing to see the main goal of this build. Judging from your replies, it appears you don't see it as a pure TO exercise, but as a build intended for real games. In which case I believe it fails miserably, even if it had worked as you believed it would when putting it together. Mainly because:
Additionally, you appear to hit like a wet noodle. Your offensive potential is basically nothing. Which means that the enemies will ignore you until the rest of the party is dead, then kill you at their leisure.In more detail:
If a wet noodle is 2d4 + 2d6 (viscous) +2d6 charge + 1 fire + 1.5 str mod + weapon enhancement with a 15-20 crit range...then yes, wet noodle.Indeed wet noodle, since your Str will probably not be sufficient. Instead, you'll probably have issues hitting as reliably as you'd need to, let alone dealing sufficient damage for your opponents to really care about your hits. To put it in perspective, if using the numbers you provided above, at 20th level, I'd estimate your charge DPR vs an average CR 20 opponent to be approximately:

Attack bonus: +20 bab, +10 Str (16 starting score, 6 belt, 8 rage), +1 weapon enhancement, +2 charge, -6 Power Attack = +27 vs AC 36, or 60% hit chance
Average normal hit damage: 5 falchion, +15 Str, +18 Power Attack, +1 weapon enhancement, +1 fire (linite), +7 vicious, +7 rhino hide = 54
Average additional crit damage: 5 falchion, +15 Str, +18 Power Attack, +1 weapon enhancement, +7 rhino hide = 46

Total DPR: (54 x 0.6) + (46 x 0.3 crit chance x 0.6 confirmation chance) = 40.68, or less than 11% of enemy hp

In other words, you're gonna need to do a whole lot of charging just to put a single average CR 20 monster out of the fight... Which wouldn't have been much of an issue had you had other means of making your enemy's life miserable, like serious debuff/control riders. But it appears you don't. (As a comparison, the DPR of the 10th level bloodrager PC in the game I'm currently running removes more than ten times as large a chunk of a CR 10 monster's total hp. Not to mention he has four attacks at full bab which each deal almost as much damage per hit as your single charge attack does at 20th, on top of having more effective control and better versatility both in and outside of combat.)


Though, this wasn't built for dealing damage, it was built taking itAnd while you turtle down and wait for the enemy to attack you, what do you expect the enemy will do?

I think you've missed an important concept known as "Defender Balance" or "Defender's Lose-Lose", which basically says that the harder it is for the enemy to take you out instead of your allies, the more difficult/painful you must make it for the enemy to focus aggression on your allies instead of you. In effect, the goal is to put the enemy in a lose-lose situation, in which attacking you is just as bad as attacking your allies. By extension, in order to make investments which makes your own durability substantially greater than your allies worthwhile, you need to make investments which makes it an equally bad idea for the enemy to try and hit your allies. And while the latter part doesn't get much direct support from Paizo options, there are quite a few indirect abilities to help you out (notably high damage, reach and size increases, combat demoralization and certain combat maneuvers). Not to mention that if your games allow 3pp options, there are some very strong such options. (For example, have a look at the warder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/warder/) from Dreamscarred Press' excellent Path of War. It's a good example of a class actually designed primarily for the defender role, and comes with class features and related options to make it excel in that role.)

As far as I can tell, the only thing you have to balance out your (intended) superior durability is Come and Get Me with Combat Reflexes. Which, again, might've worked had your AoOs been more accurate and done something far more substantial than hit like wet noodles. :smallwink:

That said, I think the barb is probably one of the best martial classes from Paizo to base a defender build on, but definitely not by focusing solely on personal durability.