In this 2-man party, we have the frenzied berserker (FB), and the stealthy archer fighter.
I was thinking of introducing a 3rd NPC or DMPC party member. The problem is that if the frenzy berserker has a high initiative bonus, and if he gets a little boboo in his knee he's goign to go insane and cleave whatever is close to him in half (can down tank monsters a couple CR above him in one round with frenzy, rage and acting first).
So in short, what I need mechanically speaking is a multipurpose, relatively powerful character who can make the game more interesting and viable by introducing interesting alternatives to deal with challenges to these 2 straight forward one trick ponies, heal them when the stuff is down, and survive some foaming monster that can get insane in any moment of a given day.
So far I'd see a bard with high initiative, calm emotions and a rod of quicken metamagic. Contingency (calm emotionsx3) would help, as well as spell focus (enchantment) or whatever that spell is. Also means to dimension door or improved invisibility or whatever when things get ugly would be nice. Any other ideas?
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I'd go with a Cohort. That way it's an NPC.
Make it a caster who focuses on two things: summoning monsters to help the FB in melee; making sure the Stealth Archer doesn't get caught in melee (boost his speed; help him hide, other buffs).
This way the monsters' real problem REMAINS the 2 PCs and not some NPC.
Now, when the FB gets in trouble he's gotta a summoned Celestial Lion or Hound Archon or Lammasu next to him and if he goes berserk it's no biggie.
And, if the Stealth Archer's personal space gets compromised he can be given invisibility, haste, jumping or climbing boosts, that kind of stuff.
As far as class, Druid is good for summoning but not bumping. Wizards can't cast Cure spells and that's the Tertiary thing you GOTTA have. Bard would be great if they could summon (I forget if they can). Cleric may be the best choice; give him some Bard or Wizard spells with Domains or something.
A janitor to clean up all the blood.
For a weird and possibly fun variant I suggest making the cohort a ghost. Maybe it is the ghost of a loved one the FB accidentally slaughtered. The ghost could be determined to see that the FB finishes some great quest (or whatever). If the FB freaked out and tried to "kill" the ghost he'd have 50% miss chance, and the ghost could go hide in a wall. Even if the FB succeeded the ghost would come back in 2d4 days via Rejuvenation.
The ghost template only has a +2 CR, so it is probably an affordable cohort. Ghosts also get a +4 Chr, so an Oracle might be better than a Cleric (though the idea of a ghost channeling positive energy is a little amusing)
I would go with wizard and build him so that everything he does is to keep the party safe from the berserker and separate enemies so the blender can do its job on one or two enemies at a time and the archer can pick and choose from targets. Also, I once played in a game with the frenzied berserker and I soon found out that hold person worked good if you ran out of enemies and at high level force cage would hold that pesky barbarian till she could get herself under control.
I played a monk with a really high Intelligence while a friend was a FB. I suggest Bard. Here is how we all handled him, cheesy as it is, it is easier with a smaller party. While Frenzied, FB can NOT make skill checks that involve INT, WIS, or CHA except Intimidate. So when all our baddies were dead and my smart guy was still standing, what did I do? I rolled a bluff check and played dead. He was not allowed to roll the sense motive, and thus he ignored me. We didn't have to do it often, soon Force Cage was the answer from our sorcerer, who had to take it primarily for the FB.
I think it would be great to have a bard do this and your player be like, "Oh crud." Especially if it was a smart bad guy who had previous experience with FB.
Heh those mechanics suggestions with bluff, summons and the ghost gave me a good laugh and it's so different from the "heal bot with quickened calm emotions".... All to use. The nearly naked guy going "dead" everytime the foam mouth guy goes crazy sounds like a classic kung-fu cops scene. The bard BBEG is priceless, especially since I actually have a bard BBEG.
Also the ghost idea as you (Devilkiller) presented is going to get stolen!!
Oh, as a little side note, we have been using this homebrew conversion
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/conversions/a5lvFinalConversionTheFrenziedBerserker
A little overpowered in combat but then that's what FB is suppsoed to be with this huge drawback of battle addiction.