Not exactly indicative of much since it is merely anecdotal, but we had our 15th level fighter and barbarian both get hit with insanity last night while standing next to each other. Of course the confusion feedback loop immediately ensued.
Fighter is falcata and board, and is pretty well optimized (41 Ac iirc).
Fighter went first on the not yet raging barbarian. He laid into him and did 119 damage, but failed to crit. One crit would have decided the combat since the fighter has exhausting critical.
Barbarian (greatsword, invulnerable rager) then went next. He raged and laid into the fighter. One crit and a few other hits later, the fighter is down at -40.
Even if you had left off the barbarian crit, he would likely have won anyway by activating CaGM.
As I said, purely anecdotal, but I do say barbarians really do seem to be more effective at high level. Though in terms of maintenance the fighter is cheaper upkeep since his AC prevents a lot of damage that the barbarian soaks up like a sponge.
There's already been a thread that did a very detailed analysis of these two showing how the Barbarian beats the fighter like all the time. Barb even can have comparable AC as the fighter if he wants. And usually if the Barb was raging and had superstitious like is popular then it wouldn't have failed the will save in the first place.
The barbarian didn't see the spell coming, so rage was not yet up (yes he does have superstition, and likely would have made the save had he been prepped).
Actually this barbarian does have the whole beast totem line, so he doesn't lose AC when raging, but chasing AC when you are a 2 hander is a fool's errand, so he didn't even try.
Though I don't know about all the time. Had the fighter scored a crit, the barbarian would have been exhausted, and there's no way he could have come back from that. Even roused anger won't overcome exhaustion.
By all the time I mean that at ever stage of the game the Barbarian has superior potential. Barbs have perception as a class skill, so he's more likely to spot things than the fighter. And if he had raged he'd not have failed. He does more damage, and had potential to do even more damage with CaGM.
And chasing AC as a two hander isn't a fool's errand, ring of deflection, armor, and amulet of natural armor. You only miss out on the shield, and that's usually used to get super armor.
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Eh, the term 'well optimized' and 'sword and board' doesn't seem to go well together. At least, I assume he had to move first (were they 5' away from each other?), since well built sword and board on a fighter tends to be TWF.
I could see well built reach builds that would brutally punish a traditional greatsword wielding barbarian, especially if it engaged first.
Reach+lunge to have the enemy end up 15' away. When the barbarian does his pounce, punish him with a fortuitous weapon (new ACG property; it basically gives you Attack of opportunity a single iterative, once per round; it is only a +1 property). With 5-6 attacks out before the barbarian even reaches him, he would have had better chances.
Not to say that a barbarian couldn't pull off a similar thing at that level. The advantage of fighter is that it can pull off that reach build early on, and still have room to specialize in other areas (personally, given the situation, it might have been wise to invest in a half elf/half orc with iron will and improved iron will; sure barbarian has clear mind that can do a similar thing...but only if rage is up before hand). At that level...yeah, the barbarian could have most of the same nice things, plus their own nice things.
I consider only stupidly high AC to be worth chasing (an opinion, not a fact of course). Hence I think it only worthwhile if you use a shield (with the potential +9 AC it will bring eventually). Yes, you can get to medium ACs as a two hander, but I don't see that as being too valuable. Better to grab a cloak of displacement or ring of blinking for about the same mitigation for less cost.
There's problems with both of those. The cloak means not cloak of resistance. And the ring gives you a 20% miss chance as well on your attacks.
True. It is amazing how much a 20% miss chance will screw you in practice. I had a BBEG fail to do any appreciable damage through a conjunction of obscuring mist (that he cast) and lousy rolls against decent AC. In 8 rounds or so of combat I did maybe 30 HP of damage from an attack which was +21 for 2d6+21.
There are other items which can get you pretty high resistance bonus without using a cloak though. Of course true seeing (fairly common on baddies at high leve) undoes the cloak of displacement.
Everything is a tradeoff.
There's already been a thread that did a very detailed analysis of these two showing how the Barbarian beats the fighter like all the time. Barb even can have comparable AC as the fighter if he wants. And usually if the Barb was raging and had superstitious like is popular then it wouldn't have failed the will save in the first place.
Yar. Though I did figure out (with some help from others) that the Fighter wins on damage at 20th, solely due to his capstone. Extra multiplier + autoconfirm is a MASSIVE DPR booster.
Yeah, I've been running a 20th fighter in a pbp here and dayumn, that auto confirm crit thing has served me well. A scimitar dropping x3 crits on things from 15 and up on the die is really quite mean.
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