Help Improving the Worst Barbarian

[Quertus]

So, I decided to move really far out of my comfort zone, and made a Barbarian. With rolled stats. Total modifiers on this garbage heap is -4; the only stat with a positive modifier is Strength (EDIT: erm, actually, he may have a +1 modifier on Intelligence, and only a -3 total modifiers). Yes, I know, that's a perfectly valid reason to reroll, but I've decided to keep it.

The question is, can the Playground bring this character up to "not a burden to the team"?

Some minimal skimming of stuff on the web says that Barbarian can use an ACF to get +2 AC & an extra attack while raging, and another can auto-rage when below 5xLv HP. If those two work together, with bad Con and some bad rolls for HP, after a few levels I could easily be raging all the time for some extra AC. If I go Quasilycanthrope (Human), I'll get some good DR from the start - should I then find an ACF to trade away Barbarian DR?

What else should I look into to make a successful Barbarian? Feats, items, skills - heck, even playstyle advice is welcome.

EDIT: yes, I know "get pounce" is the #1 advice to Barbarians.

[MisterKaws]

Can't stack Berserker Strength and Whirling Frenzy. Those are both variant types of rage.

If your HP is that terrible, you should just go Necropolitan.

[Quertus]

Can't stack Berserker Strength and Whirling Frenzy. Those are both variant types of rage.

If your HP is that terrible, you should just go Necropolitan.

Sadness. Combining those two sounded like it would help me play a tank.

Necropolitan… will be a problem, with Turn Undead (from both friend and foe). Otherwise, yes, it's a good way to overcome issues with low Con.

[pabelfly]

Half-Orc with Channeled Rage and Headlong Rush. Has some good substitution levels too.

[Trandir]

Exactly how bad are your barbarian stats?

[Quertus]

Exactly how bad are your barbarian stats?

Everything has a penalty / negative modifier, except Strength and Intelligence. Intelligence is +0 or +1. Total modifiers -4 (if +0 Int) or -3 (if +1 Int). (Going from memory, if you hadn't guessed) (EDIT: not quite as bad as I remembered: +3 -1 -1 +1 -2 -2)


Half-Orc with Channeled Rage and Headlong Rush. Has some good substitution levels too.

Half-Orc is all the rage for the Barbarian crowd… I'll have to look up those… feats?

Also, that's 2 less skill points / level vs going Human - are Barbarian skills not worth taking?

[Vizzerdrix]

Can you move your stats around? Can you change race? What is flexible, seeing as you won't re-roll stats?

If you can move stats, put the highest in con and take divine minion template. That will cover your stats for now.

Can go warforged barbarian with mithril body for some early ac, or human for aberrant dragonmark line to mark of xoriat for DR5/ something you will never run into.

[Efrate]

If your int is +1 befote half orc you get 4 a level. If you plan on staying more than a few levels barbarian taking trapsmasher acf and keeping survival up and listen and you will be fine. Intimidate is ok but not great because cha is needed, handle animal is better left to druids, craft is not super relevant, and you have 3 movement skills in climb, jump and swim. Also ride but If you are not planning to be always mounted it's kind of pointless.

So you have 5 skills of note, one only if you take a certain acf, and 4 skill points. Climb jump and swim are all eventually covered by magic except for leap attack, but if you must pick 1 and start at low levels climb might be the best. Jump if you take leap attack.

[Quertus]

Can you move your stats around? Can you change race? What is flexible, seeing as you won't re-roll stats?

If you can move stats, put the highest in con and take divine minion template. That will cover your stats for now.

Can go warforged barbarian with mithril body for some early ac, or human for aberrant dragonmark line to mark of xoriat for DR5/ something you will never run into.

I could probably swap Str & Con. Or maybe try to convince the GM to use Polymorph house rules that let you modify your changed stats by your base stats (ie, high-strength characters become high-strength forms).

So, instead of Lion Totem Barbarian, quasilycanthrope into divine minion "I'm a Lion"? That would be funny.

I had never even considered Warforged. If i could add the Feral template, it would be ridiculously enough to consider.


If your int is +1 befote half orc you get 4 a level. If you plan on staying more than a few levels barbarian taking trapsmasher acf and keeping survival up and listen and you will be fine. Intimidate is ok but not great because cha is needed, handle animal is better left to druids, craft is not super relevant, and you have 3 movement skills in climb, jump and swim. Also ride but If you are not planning to be always mounted it's kind of pointless.

So you have 5 skills of note, one only if you take a certain acf, and 4 skill points. Climb jump and swim are all eventually covered by magic except for leap attack, but if you must pick 1 and start at low levels climb might be the best. Jump if you take leap attack.

Riding gives me +1 Higher Ground bonus to hit. And flight. And "more HP" / "more attacks". And, potentially, even crazy bs like Plane Shift. I'm all about having mounts.

The rest… depends on the party how useful some of those will be.

[pabelfly]

Half-Orc is all the rage for the Barbarian crowd… I'll have to look up those… feats?

Also, that's 2 less skill points / level vs going Human - are Barbarian skills not worth taking?

Channeled Rage lets you use a Rage use to add STR to will save. Good since your will save is going to be awful. Headlong rush is another damage multiplier you can add to your charges.

[Efrate]

As a full bab strength based class your to hit should not be an issue ever. If you want to go mounted that is still fine, even as a half orc you can keep listen and ride maxed plus another skill. Again how long are you sticking out barbarian. Mounted combat is kind of feat intensive, as is uber charging, and if you want both you will almost have to take some amount of fighter levels.

Of note are martial study, or some warblade levels, for diamond mind counters. You get concentration as a class skill always (with study) and can sub it for your bad saves. Except when raging fwiw.

There is also something to be said for going warblade instead of barbarian entirely. Minor int synergy, same hd, full bab and consistant damage output, better skill list, and pseudo pounce with sudden leap. You lose improved trip from wolf totem without prereqs, but if you are not planning a tripper it's no big loss. It's +2 to hit and +3 damage with basic rage vs. maneuver stuff, which more than makes up the damage and gives a ton more besides. Also no dropping out of rage and dying.

[Kalkra]

Could you get Troll Blooded? At early levels, that can make you very hard to kill.

[Telonius]

Two things to bear in mind for Necropolitan. First, Undead are immune to morale effects, so no bonus to Will save while raging (since it's a morale bonus). Second, Undead are immune to fatigue, so no worries about being tired when you exit your rage.

[Bohandas]

Can't stack Berserker Strength and Whirling Frenzy. Those are both variant types of rage.

If your HP is that terrible, you should just go Necropolitan.

Isn't rage a morale bonis?

[Silvercrys]

Isn't rage a morale bonis?SRD says the +2 bonus to Will saves is, but the bonuses to Strength and Constitution are untyped.

[Particle_Man]

A half-orc could go barbarian long enough to get some acf goodies and then multiclass into Warblade as the latter is multiclass friendly.

[Quertus]

Several posters have mentioned dropping out of rage and dieing. Is this really a big concern when running a Barbarian? Particularly with Healing support?

[Mr Adventurer]

I've decided to keep it.

This is just bizarre. If you're going out of your comfort zone, don't you owe it to yourself to try to do it "properly" as best you can?


The question is, can the Playground bring this character up to "not a burden to the team"?

Don't you owe it to your fellow players?

[MeimuHakurei]

Several posters have mentioned dropping out of rage and dieing. Is this really a big concern when running a Barbarian? Particularly with Healing support?

If your Barbarian gets dropped to -1, you lose your rage, which also includes your bonus hit points from Constitution. Since your max HP is reduced, you're further into negative hit points, which means that your Barbarian may die suddenly from that. This can also happen if you end your rage at low hit points.

[Quertus]

This is just bizarre. If you're going out of your comfort zone, don't you owe it to yourself to try to do it "properly" as best you can?

Don't you owe it to your fellow players?

That's kinda the point, yeah. Kinda. I mean, not everyone considers balance the most important thing, or even important at all. I'd rather my character not be completely useless, but some tables wouldn't care even if my character was the load.

But why keep the stats? Well, because it's a challenge? Because, at least I got Strength, which I might not if I rolled again? Because… while it's not the character I wanted or envisioned, like everyone, I do love an underdog?


If your Barbarian gets dropped to -1, you lose your rage, which also includes your bonus hit points from Constitution. Since your max HP is reduced, you're further into negative hit points, which means that your Barbarian may die suddenly from that. This can also happen if you end your rage at low hit points.

And this… happens frequently? Even with Healing support? Any good tricks to prevent this? Or, is the Dex rage better?

[Efrate]

Do not be a barbarian? Since in combat healing is generally frowned upon, especially with a bad or average con score, at mid to higher levels death is a real risk. Above level 5 is the worst. Because you lose a minimum of 10 hp at level 5, and as soon as you go to -1 you are unconscious, rage ends, and you lose 10 or more hp going from out cold to dead with no recourse.

It is worse at higher levels, because attacks do more damage. At level 15 a bog standard cone of cold averages 52.5 damage on a failed save. You wouldn't think you need healing at 51 hp generally. A conservative estimate with a +3 con barbarian 15 is 148 hp if im mathing correctly. You have a 3rd of your hp left healing not a big priority right? You fail a reflex save and it's straight to dead.

Same with crits. It's very easy to be knocked out then go right to deaf whilst raging.

[Silvercrys]

Yeah the big problem is that, with your Con penalty, Rage is giving you a pretty big HP bonus compared to your "natural" HP -- which is great until your rage runs out of rounds while you're under the "magic threshold" of (Rage Bonus HP - 10) and it kills you instantly, and which you reach very quickly because you have a smaller buffer of natural HP to absorb hits with.

There are a few ways you can mitigate it but yeah, in general low Con Barbarians get it pretty rough.

You can spend three feats to bind Buer from Tome of Magic and get Fast Healing 1 all day, at least then if you get to negatives when your rage ends you'll automatically stabilize and you'll almost always have full HP at the start of the encounter. Buuut you'll never make a good pact with those ability scores so you'll have satyr feet and have to make non-lethal attacks against enemies with your first attack. And be very, very forgetful.

You can dip a level of Cleric and pick up the Healing Devotion feat from Complete Champion by domain swapping the Healing Domain, that gives you immediate action fast healing and the ability to use wands on yourself (plus you have some first level spell slots to heal yourself with). Try to get the War Domain to go with it so you can get free Weapon Focus and keep your attack bonus up.

But, well, if you're worried about being able to actually contribute in combat...

Another option is to see if you can exchange your Intelligence for your Wisdom and go Druid with the Shapeshifter alternate feature from Player's Handbook II, which gives enhancement bonuses to your ability scores instead of replacing them. You won't be able to cast spells above level 2 or level 3 without a Wisdom enhancing item but even the 1st level form is probably better than Rage is because it's an always-on-when-you-want-it +4 bonus to Strength and Natural Armor. Assuming you don't want to swap the 18 to Wisdom and play a Druid straight.

And, well, if you're set on Barbarian we can get a bit... creative. Especially since you seem to be open to shapechanging abilities. If your group doesn't allow LA buyoff you'll have to consider those quite carefully due to the reduced saves, hit dice (especially), and attack bonus, but particularly if you can buy off the LA and are starting at level 3 or higher I'd consider one of the following if you really want to make a Barbarian.

Warning: the cheese level of the following suggestions varies wildly.

The strongest build with the least amount cheese (other than Druid 20 with the 18 in Wis) is probably Changeling (Complete Champion Lion Totem) Barbarian 4/Warshaper 4/Bear Warrior 10/Barbarian +2. Your 20 level build ends with being able to morph into a bear while raging and getting a +20 bonus to Strength from that, you have 5 uses of rage per day, +4 additional Str and Con from Warshaper, the Warshaper natural attack enhancements and improved reach, and the Pounce ability from Lion Totem Barbarian 1. Probably the simplest and one of the stronger options that isn't totally cheesy, you don't even really dip any classes here because it just isn't necessary, only leaving off the last level of Warshaper. Also make sure you're able to use the Complete Warrior errata for Bear Warrior, class is basically pointless otherwise. But Lion Totem Barbarian 4/Warshaper 4/Barbarian +12 is also a fine build for what it's worth.

Goliath Barbarian 20 probably isn't terrible on its own, for a less cheesy +1 LA option than the templates that follow. You get to wield Large sized weapons and they have +4 Str/+2 Con/-2 Dex for racials.

If you can't use a template I'd just try Whisper Gnome or (Deep) Dwarf Lion Totem Barbarian 20, or Changeling Lion Totem Barbarian 4/Warshaper 4/Barbarian +12.

With the optimal/obvious/noncheesy looking builds out of the way, let's talk templates. I'll start with the two I would recommend and try to match them up with some races for you, then we can address Quasilycanthrope and the Divine Minion template.

The Feral Template is LA+1 from Savage Species. It gives you Fast Healing, a pretty big Natural Armor bonus, +6 Strength, +2 Con to bump you to a +0 mod, and penalties to stuff you're bad at anyway like Dex and Cha. Plus some other goodies. Doesn't even have an Int penalty. Some groups ban it for make melee characters too strong, unfortunately.

Mineral Warrior from Underdark is a fairly powerful LA +1 melee template that gives a few goodies like DR/Adamantine and a burrow speed. It has +2 Str / +4 Con ability adjustments but it has penalties to all of your mental stats. This one I don't ~think~ is banned as often even though it has pretty high DR.

For base races you really need a Con bonus unless you're going to use the race somehow (like Changeling qualifying you for Warshaper, which gets you an additional Str and Con bonus at ECL 6 anyway).

Whisper Gnome is small size so you take a slight damage penalty, but you get +1 to hit and AC in exchange. They have +2 Con and +2 Dex with penalties to Str and Cha, and a bonus on spot and listen checks. They also have a 30-ft move speed despite their size. Combining it with Feral gives you final mods of like +6/+0/+2/+1/-2/-4. Mineral Warrior is something like +4/+0/+3/+0/-2/-3.

Half-orc was mentioned and is pretty decent, but a Mineral Warrior Half-orc will give you a negative Int mod if you care about that. Feral Half-Orc mods would be something like +8/-1/+0/+0/-2/-4, Mineral Warrior would be +6/-1/+1/-1/-2/-3. See if you can use the Desert Half-orc subrace from Unearthed Arcana (also on the SRD), too, which changes the ability modifiers to +2 Con/-2 Int because you really need the Con more than the Str. The racial substitution levels you'll need for Half-orc Barbarian are in Races of Destiny.

Deep Dwarf from the Monster Manual is a pretty good pick here, too, you're a bit slower at 20 ft. but you get a Con bonus and +3 to saves versus spells which you pretty desperately need. Light sensitivity sucks but you can usually get sunglasses or something, or just using regular Dwarf but you only get +2 vs Spells then. Stats would be pretty close to the Whisper Gnome, Feral: +7/-1/+2/+1/-2/-4, Mineral Warrior: +5/-1/+3/+0/-2/-3.

Dragonborn of Bahamut probably isn't terrible, you lose your human bonus feats and such but you could start with Catfolk and get 40 ft. movement, +2 Con -2 Dex, and wings or good vision modes later on. Breath weapon isn't much to write home about though. Same stats as the Dwarf just with 1 lower Dex and 1 higher Cha.

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Now for stuff we've kind of touched on.

You mentioned Quasilycanthrope, but I don't really think it's better than Feral here. The LA is basically only because of the DR and the effectiveness of the DR is going to scale back pretty hard later on, where the Feral benefits like +6 Natural Armor and the ability score adjustments will basically always be relevant. I suppose if you don't want shapeshifting like from Bear Warrior but still want to go Warshaper and can buy off the LA it's probably fine? But I think I'd just play a Feral Changeling. If you really, really need the Human bonus feat, want to go Warshaper, and can buy off the LA it's probably fine though.

Mulhorandi Divine Minion was mentioned earlier as well. Biggest problem is it gives you the Extraplanar subtype, which means you can be targeted by spells like Banishment which you have awful saves against, and it doesn't give you any ability adjustments either... But there is definitely one trick to make it "worth it", I'm just hesitant to share because it's basically a TO early entry trick that you really shouldn't use unless your entire play group is doing high char op things.

The main point is that you need ability adjustments and special qualities to make up for your low starting stats if you're giving up a whole level for them.

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As far as equipment goes, the two hander of your choice is probably fine and you'll need a weapon at least until you get into Warshaper if you intend to use that class. Once you get into Warshaper you can grow your own natural weapons; just makes sure you find or get crafted a Necklace of Natural Weapons because it's pretty much the only way to actually get them enchanted.

And then for feats, you're basically an Uber charger, so you take power attack, leap attack, etc. once you qualify for your prestige classes. If you'd like I can dig up my ubercharging notes later and get a more specific list, it's pretty late here and I should go to sleep.

[Quertus]

So, with LA buyoff, would (mildly refluffed) "Feral" Quasilycanthrope Barbarian have good synergy? Then, build them as an übercharger, looking towards War Shaper, and possibly Divine Minion (which would mean I'd need to research some religion - do the M~ religions basically match their Egyptian counterparts?)

And where can I find the half-orc substitution levels, to see if it's worth the 2 skill point penalty to go that route?

EDIT: huh. For better or worse, Feral, shapeshifter, Trollblooded, übercharger - these are things that aren't outside my comfort zone (or my experience). I guess I was hoping that optimizing a Barbarian would give me something different. But if I'm sticking with some known flavor, I'm guessing Trollblooded would really help with the "not dieing when Rage ends", huh?

[Silvercrys]

So, with LA buyoff, would (mildly refluffed) "Feral" Quasilycanthrope Barbarian have good synergy? Then, build them as an übercharger, looking towards War Shaper, and possibly Divine Minion (which would mean I'd need to research some religion - do the M~ religions basically match their Egyptian counterparts?)

And where can I find the half-orc substitution levels, to see if it's worth the 2 skill point penalty to go that route?

EDIT: huh. For better or worse, Feral, shapeshifter, Trollblooded, übercharger - these are things that aren't outside my comfort zone (or my experience). I guess I was hoping that optimizing a Barbarian would give me something different. But if I'm sticking with some known flavor, I'm guessing Trollblooded would really help with the "not dieing when Rage ends", huh?Well, Feral and Quasilycanthrope both have +1 LA, so if you go the LA buyoff route you can't reduce your first LA until level 6 and it won't be gone until level 9. You take a pretty big hit to your HP this way due to having less hit dice. If you aren't starting at 6+ I probably wouldn't bother with both. Divine Minion is another template but you could technically acquire it at level 12 after you buy off your last LA... It doesn't really give you anything you need though except, well. You can (very arguably) use it to enter Master of Many Forms much earlier than you're supposed to, that was the trick I was referring to.

The Half-orc substitution levels should be in Races of Destiny, page 158. Level 2 changes the charge math to +4/-4 and the last one trades DR for +damage with two handed weapons.

If you want Warshaper without taking Bear Warrior I'd probably do Feral Changeling or Quasilycanthrope Deep Dwarf / Whisper Gnome (with the Feral Changeling having better stats in most respects). Quasilycanthrope Human is probably fine if you need the feats.

If you want a more vanilla barbarian experience, you probably won't be unhappy with Goliath (or Mineral Warrior Whisper Gnome) Barbarian 20 and just picking up the typical ubercharger feats like Stormguard Warrior, etc. but yeah. Pretty much all melee damage optimization is "how am I ubercharging" regardless of your class if the melee damage is the important bit to you.

The Barbarian ubercharger is typically distinguished from the Fighter one primarily by entering Frenzied Berserker for even more power attack damage, but with your already low will saves it doesn't seem like a good idea, heh. There are some other ways of ending the Frenzy like getting a party member to cast Calm Emotions on you or getting Iron Heart Surge, but you might get told you can't initiate maneuvers while raging or frenzied and if something goes wrong you'll probably kill the party.

There are some other melee builds (like Shadowpouncing and Multipouncing, or using Tome of Battle, or both! Or gishing! Or chain tripping Fighter!) but by and large if you want to optimize for melee damage you have ubercharger and not much else.

[Skum_Overlord]

Maybe take some levels in Druid? Wild Shape rage seems amazing!