| Nefariis Darkspell |
Ok a little back story to how my thought process came together...
The campaign I am jumping into has been running for 10 years with all roughly the same people, and each person has taken 4 characters up to level 20. So we are on the 5th campaign with the 5th set of characters. What I am trying to do is create an Alchemist/Barbarian archetype that's balanced and fits in with my back story - so I would love to hear and get some thoughts from you guys about my archetype.
I had an idea for a Alchemist/Barbarian/Fighter and created a back story for him that kind of went like this: When I was young my father was a great alchemist, we lived on these isles where magic was forbidden, he would regularly practice his alchemy on me, eventually he was arrested and killed but before then I had escaped out into the woods, I was picked up by a tribe of savages where I learned how to fight.
Well as it turns out (unbeknownst to me) this very thing happened in his game 2 years ago. A guy was adopting kids, practicing magic on them, eventually was caught by the players and killed. This actually gives me a pretty cool plot hook that I'm hoping the DM plays up later because eventually I am going to run into a few of these players that killed my father.
In his game he has quite a few homebrew archetypes. One of them looks like this (Has to take two levels in it)
1st - Jotunrage, Reckless Rage
2nd - Brawler, Uncanny Dodge
As for the alchemist, I am probably going to do vivisectionist. I was trying to fix the RageChemist but it is so far broken that it doesnt seem worth the effort.
Anyways, so my thought was that my father was experimenting on me so why couldn't the rage result from the experimentation and not necessarily be something I can control or as a cause of something I drink (think Bruce Banner).
Rage: Mutagen/Rage are always activated together so with this build the barbarian can only rage twice in one a day (infuse Mutagen for the alchemist discovery = 2 Mutagens) and not whenever he wants. It takes a move action and a minor action to become enraged (to make up for not having a potion, plus it should take at least a second or two to bulk up). When dealt physical damage, the player has to make a DC 15 Will save to not automatically go into a rage (If he fails he goes into a rage as a immediate reaction). If the player has already used both of his rages for the day and gets hit again and fails his will save, the player becomes fatigued for 1d4 rounds. The player gains a 3rd rage per day at level 12.
As you can see I am trying to build somewhat of a hulk type. I thought it would be corny though if after I raged I quaffed a mutagen potion (I just can't picture the hulk drinking a potion). I added the DC 15 save because at the end of Avengers, Bruce Banner does start gaining control of his powers. It seemed fitting that this guy should be able to do the same once he gains more control over it. And by limiting the barbarian to only two rages a day, I thought it might be more fair to give him a 3rd at level 12.
So what do you guys think and is there something that you would change?