Just how absurd are Barbarians?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

51 to 100 of 103 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Sovereign Court

kyrt-ryder wrote:
This isn't about Barbarians, it's about high level badasses in general.

You mean asking your goddess for a miracle isn't normal?


I mean being level 12 and not being beyond human would be abnormal. Especially in a PC class.


shadowkras wrote:

they can jump on magma, not swim through magma.

And unless someone shows me rules for swimming on magma, you cant. But i will apologize and take back my ruling if proven wrong.

Just so you know, if the magma is too dense for them to sink into it, then a character could walk across it at 2d6 fire damage per round.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
shadowkras wrote:

Is the acid flammable? If not, count as water and the elemental will be extinguised.

Is lava flammable? If not, does it count as water? Would it extinguish a fire elemental? Could you swim through it?

Yes I did dig through your post to try to gain insight into the mind of someone who thinks GMs should ignore mechanics and kill players on a whim.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I once heard that quicksand wasn't real. So I looked it up.


Ravingdork wrote:
I once heard that quicksand wasn't real. So I looked it up.

Dry quicksand is much much worse.


Quote:
I once heard that quicksand wasn't real. So I looked it up.

In pathfinder it works like in the movies though.

But as it was only an example, let me give you another example instead:
How about liquids more dense than water?
Check the viscosity of magma and you will notice that its much harder to swim on magma than on oil or water.

Unlike in world of warcraft, it doesnt work like water, you will flail your arms and not go anywhere.


shadowkras wrote:
Quote:
I'm soryr but it is piss poor GMing to ignore mechanics just because you want to...

Let me quote you some lines from the CRB:

Quote:

Game Master (GM): A Game Master is the person who

adjudicates the rules and controls all of the elements of the
story and world that the players explore
. A GM’s duty is to
provide a fair and fun game.

And from the SRD:

Quote:
Even with the vast range of options presented in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, only GMs know what threats their players might face or powers they might come to control. Just as GMs arbitrate the rules within their games, so can they manipulate, repurpose, and wholly invent new rules to improve their games.

As i said before, any metagaming used to abuse the rules should be met with death.

GM: "There is a pool of lava in front of you, there is no way to pass through, you have to go back."
Player: "Actually, if i simply run through, i will take 20d6 points of damage, my barbarian has over 200 hp, he will survive".

Nope. Dead.

No one argued you couldn't. Just that it was piss poor GMing. Something I whole heartedly agree with.


Magma is more than twice as dense as water and far more dense than a human body. If it's molten iron magma, it could be over 7 times as dense.

There's no game reason why a high level barbarian couldn't run or swim or crawl across a pool of magma if he's tough enough to survive contact in the first place. It would definitely qualify as difficult terrain though.

Very doable when you only take 2d6 damage a round since you wouldn't be fully immersed.

Shadow Lodge

Me not absurd. Me surd challenged.


Quote:

Magma is more than twice as dense as water and far more dense than a human body. If it's molten iron magma, it could be over 7 times as dense.

There's no game reason why a high level barbarian couldn't run or swim or crawl across a pool of magma if he's tough enough to survive contact in the first place. It would definitely qualify as difficult terrain though.

Very doable when you only take 2d6 damage a round since you wouldn't be fully immersed.

Crawling, i could see that happening depending on what type of magma it is.

If the magma is nearly not moving, it means it's almost solid and you can even walk on it, as long as you dont stand in place and let yourself sink in. Its just hot rocks.

But if it's a river of lava, then its another story, and its worth taking a read at this article i found when reading about magma.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kolokotroni wrote:

What most people dont realize is dnd leaves any sense of reality very early on. Human ability ends about 5th level. The absolute peak of human capability is maybe 6th level. A 12th level barbarian is a super hero. So yea he can walk through lava, so? The cleric is a literal walking miracle, the wizard bends time and space to his will, why are we concerned that a barbarian can deal with some lava?

Agreed and "like"'d.

I kind hope, if a PF2 ever comes out or maybe in an official post, they insert some text summarizing that great "Calibrating Your Expectations" essay. I think many players/GMs don't entirely understand what PF/3.X levels really equal and I don't know of a better read on the subject.

Melee's past level 5 aren't Conan or (book) Legolas, they're Capt America or Daredevil by 6-7. By the time you're talking mid teens they're Wonder Woman. By 20, they're Superman just w/o natural flight but also no kryptonite weakness.

Even before you break human norms physical liberties are already being taken, just look at giant insects. So even at levels 1-5, cut the poor melees some slack. Even with just (Ex) abilities they're basically already magical too.

Past level 7 or so though... they aren't [Sp where appropriate] Gimli, Aragon, The Mountain, The Viper, Conan, Madmartigan, etc, etc, etc... they are a Hercules, Beowolf, Brock Samson, Vegeta, Wolverine, (comic) Thor.

A some point they brush their teeth with lava. [And, it's important to remember, in all areas but direct combat are prob. still outclassed by spell casters].

To sum it up... if you as a GM past level 6 are holding your meleers to real world physics you're not understanding the system or the world it's portraying/it's narrative level. They're already exceeding what a real human body can do, welcome to a world of high fantasy. If you want realism you need E6 or E8. If you can grasp guy who can take an earth elemental punch to the testicles and smile all while knocking all of Smaugs teeth out in one blow then you're ready to run Level 7+ meleers.


To cross 10' of magma:

2 crawl actions. 4d6 damage.

1d3 rounds of lingering damage. 2d6 extra damage on average.

Total 6d6 damage or 21 on average.

A 2nd level barbarian can cross 10' of magma with a very good chance of success.

Depending on your interpretation, the barb might be able to make both crawl actions in the same round and cut his damage by 2d6 (magma rules state per round of exposure). He might be able to cross the magma at 1st level.


Celanian wrote:

To cross 10' of magma:

2 crawl actions. 4d6 damage.

1d3 rounds of lingering damage. 2d6 extra damage on average.

Total 6d6 damage or 21 on average.

A 2nd level barbarian can cross 10' of magma with a very good chance of success.

Depending on your interpretation, the barb might be able to make both crawl actions in the same round and cut his damage by 2d6 (magma rules state per round of exposure). He might be able to cross the magma at 1st level.

Just jump at that point

Silver Crusade

Ok guys?

Professor. Lava. HOT!

We should probably return to the actual topic of the thread, which is barbarian absurdities, not lava and its relation to quality of DMing.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just run across it and stop worrying. No damage taken.

It would take a bit of effort to be submerged in lava.

On topic:

It's not just barbarians being absurd. The game itself is absurd. Nothing follows the rules of physics which is where the basis of absurdity would come from in the first place.

I stab you with a sword, but your DR says it didn't hurt you.

You swing your sword a bunch and you can suddenly take 3 sword hits instead of one before you die.

Wizards break all laws of thermodynamics.

Clerics do the same along with performing miracles.

Classes get skill points to invest making them more resourceful.

The capability of carrying a thousand pounds.

As others have noted though this isn't the absurdity of the barbarian as every example listed applies to every class as they level up.


Spook205 wrote:

Ok guys?

Professor. Lava. HOT!

We should probably return to the actual topic of the thread, which is barbarian absurdities, not lava and its relation to quality of DMing.

The debate is quite heated, not sure if we can get back to original topic


My group used to regularly use a barbarian as an orbital weapon. All we needed was a teleportation circle.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
MagusJanus wrote:
My group used to regularly use a barbarian as an orbital weapon. All we needed was a teleportation circle.

Okay Kronk hold your breath...


2 people marked this as a favorite.

So the TL;DR on the actual topic of the thread seems to be: barbarians are not really any more absurd than the rest of the system is by default. The question you must ask yourself is if you consider this a feature or a bug. If you don't like it, I might suggest several other systems that cleave to a more realistic/lethal world.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
MagusJanus wrote:
My group used to regularly use a barbarian as an orbital weapon. All we needed was a teleportation circle.

Reminds me of a 4E Eberron game I was in. We were a freelance adventuring company based out of Sharn and we managed to get ourselves an airship by swearing semi-fealty to the house in charge of such things. And then in randomly rolled loot we found an un-installed Window of Escape... essentially it lets you jump through it and then take no fall damage when you land.

Needless to say we installed it on the bottom of our ship and air dropped from near orbit into everywhere we were going, whether it was appropriate or not.

Oh stupid 4E wondrous items, how I miss you. Silent Shovel too... got one of those in random loot and it is still a joke years afterward.


There is a large difference between knowing you are tough, and using out of character knowledge in game so you inherently know how damaging lava is and it mathematically can't kill you.

Edit: ninjad by lincoln


I don't think it's terribly unreasonable for him to go, "You know, this feels about like that dragon fire did, just...I dunno, ickier. If I make this quick..."

The Exchange

Captian Von Spicy Wiener wrote:

I was talking with a friend the other day and we got to thinking just how absurd barbarians can get in terms of the damage they can take from the environment... and if you have any good barbarian stories please feel more than free to share.

Let's see, other stupid barbarian tricks... does deliberately allowing themselves to be swallowed whole so they don't have to try to overcome exterior DR count?!


So you equate being burned by a quick blast of fire as giving him enough info to know how swimming in a river of fiery molten rock will feel? By that scenario the barbarian wouldn't know whether it was 20d6 or 30d8 would he since he's only guestimating?


Lincoln Hills wrote:
Captian Von Spicy Wiener wrote:

I was talking with a friend the other day and we got to thinking just how absurd barbarians can get in terms of the damage they can take from the environment... and if you have any good barbarian stories please feel more than free to share.

Let's see, other stupid barbarian tricks... does deliberately allowing themselves to be swallowed whole so they don't have to try to overcome exterior DR count?!

I don't think so. You are a fearless badass fighting a giant creature with hide thick enough to stop even your mighty blade... it stands to reason it may be easier to murderize it from inside its stomach. Jumping down a something's throat and cutting your way out at the other end is just another day in the life.


chaoseffect wrote:
I don't think so. You are a fearless badass fighting a giant creature with hide thick enough to stop even your mighty blade... it stands to reason it may be easier to murderize it from inside its stomach. Jumping down a something's throat and cutting your way out at the other end is just another day in the life.

Had a rogue do that once.

Well ok.

He didn't jump. He got eaten. And then proceeded to murderize it on his own (the rest of us were busy dealing with a spellcasting threat: ranger got disintegrated, there was a stone golem about, and no one could really focus on the giant worm 50 feet in the air not directly trying to kill us).

The Exchange

1 person marked this as a favorite.

You know, I've never thought to check to see if a creature is always flat-footed against attacks that are coming from inside its own chest cavity, but I'd be willing to bet they are. Load up your rogue with acid resistance, shield other, and a little spicy mustard - and send him in!

(Y'know, Captain v.S.W. might be on to something about this game getting silly at times...)

Webstore Gninja Minion

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Removed several posts and their replies. Let's apply a few abjuration spells and cool down the lava discussion, and redirect it towards our rageaholic class.


shadowkras wrote:
Quote:
I want you to slowly, and patiently, explain to me how a person knowing how tough and resilient they are is metagaming.

Listen, i believe we are all fairly knowing about how magma works, be it from all the movies we watched or school books, so we have a fairly good idea that magma burns and quickly. Yet we still need to google to see if its possible or not to walk on magma, and we get all kind of results about the differences between magma and lava flows, or types of stones that compose it, or how hot it actually is.

That is because magma is completely out of our threat frame of reference as normal human beings. My ability to assess lava's danger is an order of magnitude too poor. The same way a navy seal, or a martial arts master is far superior at assessing threats then I am, a character would have a different frame of reference.

Quote:

A character with absolutely no knowledge of it wouldnt have a way to know if he can survive it or not. He would throw something into it and see it burn away almost instantly. Thats all the metagaming knowledge he gets.

Again, completely inaccurate. That barbarian has walked through balls of fire, walls of fire, possibly even punched a fire elemental in the face. He's also been bitten by a dragon, mauled by a giant lion shot full of a dozen arrows and more or less come out fine.

He has significantly more information in terms of how much punishment his body can take then you give him credit for.

Quote:

Said character had absolutely no way of knowing that magma deals 20d6 points of damage and that he is tough enough to survive it. For all he knows, magma is instant death and willingly jumping on shouldnt even be considered a bad idea by his book, but a quick way to be registered on the hall of stupid deaths.

He doesnt know what 20d6 is. But the same way I know that a baseball bat will heart, and a solid hit could kill me, a gun will definately put me down, possibly kill me, and a small knife will hurt me badly, possibly kill me the barbarian has a general frame of reference for how much damage things like falling from great heights and super heated rock will do to him.

And again, no one is saying its wise to jump into magma, but the guy who just punched out a trex might be right in having additional confidence beyond that of a normal person.

Quote:

Here is one of my house rules:
The moment you metagame, the GM has all the rights to change anything in the game rules.

So long as there has to be agreement with what is metagaming. Because the barbarian knowing he can take a huge amount of punishment, including being burned, before going down isnt metagame knowledge, its basic knowledge one gets as he explores his physical ability.

Quote:


If you want to know that red dragons are immune to fire, you will need to roll that DC 10 knowledge arcana check. No ranks means automatic failure.

Um, except thats not how knowledge works. The same way very common information doesnt require specific training in the real world, something that is a dc 10 knowledge check can be done untrained. Its automatic. Just like I dont need to make a knowledge check to know what the accellerator or break do on a car, even if I havent been taught how to drive, the vast majority of people already know when they get to driving school.

In a world with conveniently color coded dragons, red dragons being immune to fire being common knowledge isnt even remotely metagaming. Its just basic information. Now if dragons are rare and secret in your world, thats obviously different. But in the default setting this is like requiring a trained knowledg check to know how to lace up ones boots.

The Exchange

Kark! Now I'm answering a post that isn't there. I think I'll delete my first post just so it doesn't look like an orphan. ;)

(after deleting) OK, that's better. But I'm keeping the one about mustard. I think the mustard is an important element.


Post this came from is gone, but...

Quote:
If you want to know that red dragons are immune to fire, you will need to roll that DC 10 knowledge arcana check. No ranks means automatic failure.

DC 10 can be rolled untrained. It's DC 11 that can't.


Quote:
something that is a dc 10 knowledge check can be done untrained. Its automatic.

As far as i know, Knowledge Checks are Trained Only.

Quote:
DC 10 can be rolled untrained. It's DC 11 that can't.

You are right, but the DC wouldnt be 10, would be slighly higher due to their CR.

The post was removed because i quoted a post that was deleted. :(


1 person marked this as a favorite.
shadowkras wrote:
The post was removed because i quoted a post that was deleted. :(

Indeed. Was just making a note of that.

As for the DC of the "knowledge check to know that dragons breath dangerous stuff" it's weird.

It's one of the Proud Nails of the d20 system: hatchling dragons are easy to identify and then mutate into non-euclidean shapes as they age.

"That, that's a Danaus plexippus. It's a migrating butterfly of the milkweed family."
What about that?
"I...I don't know. It's just too big. Might be a bear or a whale."


Quote:
It's one of the Proud Nails of the d20 system: hatchling dragons are easy to identify and then mutate into non-euclidean shapes as they age.

I was thinking the same after my post.

Its much easier to identify a hatchling, which may not even be fully coloured yet, than to identify a great wyrm.


http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060414a

ctrl-f "Because This One Made Us Smile"


MattR1986 wrote:

There is a large difference between knowing you are tough, and using out of character knowledge in game so you inherently know how damaging lava is and it mathematically can't kill you.

12th level barbarian with 140 HP: I dip my toe in the lava. I take 7 damage. Hmm, just a flesh wound. That arrow fired by mook hobgoblin hurt more. I think I'm confident I can run/swim/crawl over the lava.

As silly as this sounds, that's the way physics and biology works in Golarion. It's entirely in character for the barbarian to know that the lava isn't much of a threat to him. You're trying to impose our universe's frame of reference rather than Golarion's frame of reference. Completely invalid.

51 to 100 of 103 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / General Discussion / Just how absurd are Barbarians? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.