Regalius's page

Regalius wrote:

I'm waiting for someone to come along and tell me some super secret tech that makes use of some unique advantage the barbarian has over the fighter to finally break even. But my hope is dwindling the more I look for it.

Fighter is a very powerful class. One of my top three for power level. The other two being Bard and Rogue. Champion and Cleric round out my top 5.

There are several movement class feats that are available to Barbarian. No Escape, Fast Movement, and Raging Athlete come to mind immediately. Fleet would stack with Fast Movement because Fleet is untyped. The others could not be replicated with skill feats. None of those are available to Fighter.

But ultimately, if what you want is a character that is good at hitting bosses and can cast buff spells on themselves, you may be better with a Fighter with a spellcasting archetype. There is nothing wrong with that combination for that purpose.

There is nothing wrong with Bloodrager either. But not every class is going to appeal to every player.

I guess I'm dug into Bloodrager because the classes flavour fits the character I'm trying to build, but frustrated that another class could just do it all better.

Finoan wrote:

I'm thinking you are tripping over the PF2 game balance.

One of the effects of having good game and class balance is that many martial characters have equivalent mechanical power level. And the thing is that Fighter is the top tier class for reliable weapon attacks. If you are comparing any other character concept you come up with to Fighter based on how well they can reliably hit and deal damage, everything else is going to be sub-par compared to Fighter.

The other effect of the game and class balance is that being sub-par is not a significant drawback. The amount of difference between best-in-class and sub-par is not large enough to overwhelm the d20 rolls that are used for deciding outcomes.

So the result is - you can play what feel like an interesting character to play and let the game balance keep things reasonable for success rates.

The perk for Barbarian in comparison to Fighter is the damage per hit.

Bloodrager also gets a feat at level 6 to be able to steal spell power from enemy spellcasters to fuel their own spells. That is something that a Fighter with Wizard archetype wouldn't be able to do.

Yep. This is how it is.

The barbarian can be built to do other things well as well. A barbarian can be built to be a better maneuver user than a fighter. To me sub par at a single thing like consistent damage is one aspect of a martial.

You have to analyze each martial to see what they can do.

Even a ranger as an example has things they can do that other martials can't. If you lean into it, then you can build a pretty amazing character. I stepped back from focusing my ranger on doing the most damage on their own and focused on their support capabilities which are surprisingly good. As a flurry ranger being able to lower the MAP on an martial ally is quite powerful, especially in boss fights.

I feel like folks need to remember subpar is a relative term as different classes can do different things better than other classes.

My issue with this is that Barbarian, like fighter, is a class that is 99% focused on their combat performance, but is somewhat significantly behind on multiple fronts, to elaborate;

Barbarian gives up concentration, Fighter gives up nothing, he just fights good. There's no "if you wear heavy armor then you have to use action economy to rage", no anathema, no terrible first level feat selection, nothing. It's a little jarring, is all. The more you compare the two, the more the advantages of one over the other you get. It never quite stops.

The damage bonus Barbarian gets, even a Giant Barbarian, gets progressively more overshadowed by the flat +2 bonus to attack rolls the further into levels you go, and especially when you get into additional reactive strike territory and such.

Rage gives additional temp hp, right? If I take a look at a simple consumable item like Numbing Tonic, that temp hp feels like a joke in comparison. That's available to any other martial, INCLUDING Fighter!

It might seem okay to be subpar, but you're supposed to be subpar in one or two things, right? You can't just be subpar at everything in comparison. Like, Barbarian has a damage bonus, right? A fighter at level 1 can buy a one time use potency crystal (WHICH IS CONCENTRATION), to make sure that one thing he really needs to focus dies.

It's just... it doesn't make sense to me. I've heard it said that barbarian has cool mobility options, but all the cool mobility options either do not stack with existing skill feats, or can be taken at exactly the same levels as your first actually useful combat feats. Most of which are as good or worse than a level 1 fighter feat even 8 levels later. I can't be the only one to find that completely absurd.

I'm waiting for someone to come along and tell me some super secret tech that makes use of some unique advantage the barbarian has over the fighter to finally break even. But my hope is dwindling the more I look for it.

Hi. Barbarian build for a westmarches type game with lots of players and GMs, parties can vary wildly. I'd like to figure out how to build this character in such a way that it doesn't just end up a dollar store fighter, and maintains a high level of power.

Our custom rules are Free Archetype, exemplar and its dedication is banned.

My current thinking is playing as a bloodrager, so I can bring my own buffs with me in case the party might be lacking a cohesive roster for the particular game. I've built it around getting fighter dedication and using a reach weapon to get as many reactive strikes as possible. My reasoning is that reactive strikes happen at full MAP, so that I'm forced to endure -5 penalties to my attacks as little as possible.

A couple of other quirks I'm thinking of:
I don't use damaging spells at all on the bloodrager, entirely skip them because I don't trust the rather low DC and spell attack roll to be effective against boss fights. It's all buffs from the arcane spell list.

Battleborn Nephilim, primarily for flavor. This also gives me their cool Glory and Valor! ability, which I don't exactly expect to be especially good, but seems like an okay way to self-sustain. I'm mostly trying to see if someone would talk me out of it, because I don't expect 4 hp a turn at level 9 to ever make a difference.

Adopted Dwarf, purely so I can get Pierce the Darkness, which lets me just ignore a whole type of control effect (magical darkness). That seems really cool.

At high levels, my gameplan is to play around reactive strike and awesome blow, and at level 20 I take the fighter ability that gives me an extra reactive strike per turn.

Thus turn 1 at higher levels would look like this:
Contingency - Haste
2 actions - Enlarge
Quickened action (likely reach my enemy) - Strike
1 action - Awesome Blow

Now they are shoved and prone, have to stand up and presumably walk back into my range, triggering two Reactive Strikes on the way in. Next turn I can Whirlwind Strike the whole battlefield and so on, and so on.

Am I just massively coping here? Is this just a fighter with a caster dedication with extra steps? How do I build a barbarian that doesn't just feel overshadowed by fighter? This character also feels insanely weak at low levels.